Patrick.om @PatrickVB0001

Germany keeps winning... - Unemployment is surging - Energy prices are surging - Inflation is surging - Deindustrialization is accelerating - Social cohesion is falling apart Meanwhile, Germany is preparing for a war with Russia that it cannot hope to win, and hardly anyone in Germany is willing to fight. How many more ingredients do you need before social unrest turns into political violence?

Good Morning from Germany, where the primary deficit (deficit before interest payments) is among the Eurozone’s largest: The OECD projects 3.1% for 2027, a stark reversal from pre-pandemic surpluses as the budget is deep in the red. That helps explain why JPMorgan puts the fiscal adjustment needed to stabilise Germany’s debt ratio at 3.4% of GDP, vs just 1% for Italy. BUT: France faces an even bigger adjustment: 4.9% of GDP to put debt on a sustainable path.

Good Morning from Germany, where the govt is hosting its first investment summit in Berlin, taking a page from France’s “Choose France” playbook. Since end-2019, real capital investment has FALLEN 6.9%, while govt consumption has RISEN 15.2%. GDP is up just 1.9% over the same period, through Q2 2026. More state consumption, less investment in future growth. Quite a backdrop for “Invest in Germany.”

Maggie the Rancher just flexed on every diet guru telling you meat will kill you. At 85 years old, Maggie White is still working 14-hour days on her Alberta cattle ranch — often in sub-zero temperatures — and she looks like she could outwork half the people half her age. She’s been a lifelong carnivore for more than 65 years. Meat and water. That’s it. No kale. No seed oils. No “balanced plate” lectures from people who’ve never castrated a bull in a blizzard. Born in 1941, she left veterinary school, moved west, and built a life raising cattle. While the rest of the world was being told red meat causes heart disease and aging, Maggie just kept eating the food that made sense to her body and kept working the land. She still runs her herd, still does the physical work, and still looks decades younger than her actual age. When most people her age are managing pill organizers, she’s managing cattle. This isn’t theory. This is a woman who dropped the modern food guidelines before most of them existed and never looked back. Hard physical work + ancestral food = function that refuses to quit. She doesn’t need a study to tell her what she can already feel in her arms, her joints, and her ability to still get the job done every single day. The same institutions that spent decades warning us away from meat now have to explain people like Maggie. The ones who ignored the advice, ate the animals they raised, and stayed strong while everyone else got softer, sicker, and more medicated. Ranchers like her have been living the experiment the rest of us are only now catching up to. Maggie doesn’t flex for likes. She flexes because the work still needs doing and her body still answers the call. That’s the real flex — not looking young for your age, but remaining capable of the life you actually want to live. Eat the meat. Do the work. Stay dangerous. 🥩

@heimbergecon Belgium is running a massive STRUCTURAL fiscal DEFICIT, indicating a structural expansionary fiscal policy. This graph is completely mixed up !

Good Morning from Germany, where industrial production unexpectedly rose 2% MoM in Aug, largely thx to a construction surge. Manufacturing gained just 0.6%, held back by carmakers’ summer shutdowns and weaker chemicals output. Full order books and public infrastructure spending offer hope. But the bigger picture: output is still ~8% below its 2021 avg. Stabilisation, w/a long road to recovery.

The Euro fell to its weakest level since May 2025 as reports that Spanish govt officials are preparing for an early election added to investor concerns over political and fiscal risks across the region. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

‼️⚠️NEW PAPER⚠️‼️ @AJPCardo: doi.org/10.1016/j.ajpc… 1-year of telehealth care centered on a ketogenic diet (with liberal saturated fat intake), in 90 adults with ⬆️BMI. LDL-C didn't change & 10-year CVDrisk ⬇️ 28%. TLDR? Real🌎 data showing a keto diet ⬇️CVDrisk over 1 year

🇪🇸 En Espagne, Pedro Sánchez a convoqué des élections législatives anticipées le 29 novembre. Le Premier ministre socialiste a subi un nouveau revers avec le rejet de ses mesures sur le logement. Depuis des mois, il est privé d'une majorité stable au Parlement et son entourage proche multiplie les affaires de corruption. Le Premier ministre socialiste joue son avenir politique le 29 novembre, neuf mois avant le terme prévu de la législature. Les élections sont loin d'être gagnées pour Sánchez : la droite libérale (PP) est en tête des sondages et une coalition entre le PP et les nationalistes de VOX, crédités entre 15 et 20 % des voix, apparaît aujourd'hui comme le scénario le plus probable. Le dernier sondage en date :

Did you know that a fast actually increases your metabolic rate? It's a myth that your metabolism slows the moment you stop eating. Early in a fast, it actually does the opposite. As blood glucose tends to drift down when you stop eating, your body releases more norepinephrine (a close cousin of epinephrine/adrenaline), and your resting energy expenditure climbs up. In healthy adults who fasted for 84 hours, resting energy expenditure rose about 14% by day three, while norepinephrine more than doubled. Of course, the more adrenaline and its sibling rise, the more they inhibit insulin release. This further amplifies the metabolic rate effect, insofar as insulin slows metabolic rate very well. This is clearly not "starvation mode." There is simply a metabolic cost to your body mobilizing fuel and keeping you alive while you take a break from food. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10837292/

Eurozone bond spreads keep widening as Spain’s snap-election announcement adds to France’s debt and budget fears. France’s 10yr spread over Bunds widens 4.7bps today, Italy’s 4.6bps, Spain’s 4.3bps. Germany remains a safe haven: only Austria, Latvia and Lithuania outperform Bunds today.

🏭 One refinery feeds your car, your fertiliser and your plastic. Crude oil is worth very little until a refinery splits it. The first step is distillation, which separates crude into LPG, naphtha, kerosene, diesel and a heavy residue. Secondary units then upgrade those streams: 🔹 Vacuum distillation recovers gas oil from the residue 🔹 FCC units and hydrocrackers turn heavy oil into gasoline and propylene 🔹 Reformers produce the aromatics that petrochemicals need 🔹 Hydrotreaters strip out sulphur to make clean fuels What comes out feeds 4 industries: fuels, petrochemicals, plastics and fertiliser. A US refinery gets 19 to 20 gallons of gasoline and 11 to 13 gallons of diesel from each 42-gallon barrel. That mix can only be shifted at the margin. A refinery built for gasoline can't switch to diesel when diesel runs short. So losing refining capacity hurts more than losing crude. When a plant stops, diesel for trucks and farms, jet fuel for airlines and feedstock for plastics all disappear together. This is where we are now.... The world has crude. It is short of the plants that turn crude into products. If you want to know more about this, read my latest article👇 themerchantsnews.substack.com/p/can-brent-go…

Ok here we go! 50 million barrels of emergency EU diesel supply over ~120 days = ~415 kbpd additional diesel flow rate That's roughly one-third of the net-decline we've seen in seaborne diesel supplies this year Big help! (same flow rate on crude, but that matters much less)

*Walter Bloomberg @DeItaone

3 weeks ago

*MACRON: G7 DECIDED TO RELEASE DIESEL AND CRUDE STOCKS *MACRON: DIESEL, CRUDE STOCKS TO BE RELEASED OVER 4 MONTHS

20 60 461 211K 16

Good Morning from #Germany, where Berlin has reason to worry about France: Paris’s budget drama is pushing the French 10yr yield premium over Bunds toward 149bps, the widest since Jan 2012. German bonds are a haven, but French fiscal turmoil is hardly good news for Germany.

Alarmists: “World on fire!” Reality: By Sep 30, global burned area likely never lower than 2026 Disasters in France, Spain & Canada are tragic—but climate is global. Cherry-picking isn’t science Climate policy does near-nothing for fires We need better fire policy (prescribed burns, let some burn) and better climate info gwis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/apps/gwis.stat…

German inflation accelerated to 3.3% in Sep from 2.9% in Aug, driven by another sharp rise in energy prices. Core inflation, which strips out energy and food, held steady at 2.4%.

Good Morning from Germany, where the bond-market divide w/France is the widest since the 2012 Euro crisis. France now pays over 120bps more than Germany to borrow for 10yrs, almost double the premium four months ago. Political turmoil and fiscal fears are driving the countries apart. France even pays 22bps more than Italy; the biggest gap since the Euro’s launch.

Alcohol is a hot topic (and an odd one for a guy like me to bring up--I've never had a drop in my life). But there is a relevant metabolic angle to it. If you drink most nights while trying to lose fat, you are regularly shutting down fat oxidation. The body clears alcohol first--it's a fuel that demands "priority boarding". While that is happening, fat burning drops hard, and more of the fat from your meals gets stored instead of burned. In one study, subjects drank about 96 g of alcohol in a day (roughly seven drinks), and 24-hour fat burning fell by about a third. That drop showed up whether the alcohol was added on top of their meals or swapped in for other calories. If you're looking to lose fat, I'd put alcohol at the top of the list of things to scrutinize. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1545851/

@ChrisMartzWX Very interesting! Is the data for the US or worldwide?

Then why does the data show that global wildfire burn area, including from forest fires (not just Savannah grassland), have not increased since at least 2002? Why are you lying?

Sheldon Whitehouse @SenWhitehouse

4 weeks ago

Today’s simple truth: climate change is making wildfires more frequent, more intense, and more destructive. We should all be able to agree on that.

180 206 749 32K 11