unkown @unkownfinance

🇬🇧 No court order. Straight from your bank account. UK Chancellor John Healey is expected to let HMRC take tax-debt instalments from persistent non-payers' accounts at the Oct 28 budget (The Times). Target: ~£4bn in smaller debts. Due process shouldn't be optional.

🇫🇷 70,000 police. Louvre shut. Curfews in Paris. France braces for a 2nd weekend of cost-of-living protests after last week's riots: 2,700 arrests, 217 jailed (AFP/BBC). A state this big, and people still can't make ends meet. That's the real crisis.

🚨 "Advanced stages." That's how US intel chief Jay Clayton describes Iran's lethal plots against Americans abroad, in a memo to Rubio (AP/Axios). The US is now cutting staff at embassies in the UAE, Qatar, Jordan and Lebanon. This war is far from over. 🇺🇸

🇺🇸🇷🇺 A $25B Alaska gas venture. Secret Russian money? Polar LNG's ex-CEO says sanctioned Novatek funded part of it via a UAE backer. 3 execs quit (NYT/FT). Polar calls him "disgruntled." Novatek confirms it wants a stake. Energy dominance can't run on Kremlin cash.

💰 Ken Griffin: AI is "almost certainly" in a bubble (Bloomberg). The risk: GPUs are like airline seats. Tiny marginal cost, so a glut can send prices into freefall, like fiber in 2000. His twist: bubble survivors lead markets for decades. Let the market pick winners. 📈

🇺🇸🇺🇦 66% vs 3%. That's US voters siding more with Ukraine vs Russia (Economist/YouGov, Oct 19-20). Trump on Friday floated 200% tariffs on both to end the war, then admitted the US doesn't buy enough from either for it to work. Tariffs aren't a peace plan.

🇺🇸 Two Dan Sullivans. One Senate seat. DOJ sued Alaska to block certifying the Nov 3 result if Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) loses and votes for a second "Daniel J. Sullivan" could have flipped it (NBC). Trump: "I'm the one that said do it." A judge decides next. ⚖️

🚨 "We may do another little Epic Fury." Trump at a Florida rally Friday, on Iran. He didn't elaborate. NYT reports the US and Israel have plans for short, intense strikes after the midterms. Brent is already at $116. Markets won't like this one. 🛢️

🇨🇦 Tariff relief, only where the votes are. From Oct 30, Trump exempts 9 categories of Canadian goods from his 50% tariffs, a boost for Maine's Sen. Collins (AP). The catch: the tariffs move to valves, carpets and more (BBC). If tariffs hurt Maine, they hurt everyone. 📉

🇫🇷 Moody's blinks. France keeps its Aa3 rating, outlook still negative. Most analysts expected a cut to A1 tonight. PM Lecornu says it "defies the declinist forecasts." A reprieve, not a rescue. Without real spending cuts, the downgrade is just delayed. (AFP)

📉 Americans are almost as gloomy as ever. UMich consumer sentiment: 48.0 in October, 10% below a year ago and 15% below February, before the Iran conflict. Year-ahead inflation expectations: 4.7%. Durable-goods buying conditions: down 18%. Inflation is the cruelest tax.

🛢️ Brent just hit $116, a five-month high. Houthi attacks in Saudi Arabia pushed it up 2.7% on Friday. US crude: $102 (Reuters). European gas is up almost 30% this month. Expensive energy is a tax on everyone. Produce more, regulate less. 📈

🇺🇸 Trump on a Democratic Congress: "I veto everything." "And then the Democrats come and they want to make a deal," he told reporters Friday, 11 days before the Nov 3 midterms. Overriding a veto takes two-thirds of both chambers. Gridlock, loading. 🚨

🚨 DOJ charged two ex-senior FBI officials with lying to Congress about the Hunter Biden probes. Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides allegedly misled a House panel on an FBI task force's role (Reuters). Floris' lawyers call it political. Charged isn't convicted. 🇺🇸

🥇 Gold just cracked $4,000. Spot hit $3,986.50, its lowest since July 20, and is down 3.5% this week (Reuters). The culprit: Brent above $111 keeps Fed "higher for longer" alive. Dow down 1% by late morning (AP). Cheap energy would fix more than any central bank. 📉

🇺🇸 US factories are booming. October flash manufacturing PMI: 56.0, a 53-month high. Factory hiring is the fastest since 2012 (S&P Global). The catch: selling prices rose at the sharpest rate since Aug 2022. Growth is great. Sticky inflation isn't. 📈

🏠 Big investors are about to be banned from buying US homes. From Jan 7, 2027, anyone controlling 350+ single-family homes can't buy more, under Treasury's proposed ROAD to Housing Act rules. Build-to-rent is carved out. Want cheaper homes? Build more. Bans add zero supply.

🇫🇷 France is paying euro-crisis prices to borrow. 10y yield hit 5.14% this week, highest since 2002. Spread over German Bunds touched 177.7 bps, widest since Nov 2011 (Reuters). Moody's reviews its Aa3 rating tonight. Decades of overspending. Now the bill. 📉

🚨 First Russian diesel bound for the US since the 2022 import ban is at sea. Tanker Agioi Fanendes loaded 40,000 t at Primorsk, ETA New York ~Nov 7 (Reuters). Trump's deal: 300k t now, 500k t in Nov. Cheaper diesel needs more US refining, not Kremlin favours. 🇺🇸

📡 SpaceX vs. the phone giants? AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile slid 3%+ premarket on a report that SpaceX is in talks to launch a nationwide wireless carrier. Tower owners jumped: Crown Castle +8.5%, American Tower +5.6% (Reuters). Competition beats regulation. Bring it on.