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Yesterday, leaders from Google, Meta, Anthropic, xAI, Nvidia, and OpenAI signed a joint commitment with the White House on frontier model responsibilities. It’s voluntary. It’s short. And it’s structured around four clear layers: 1 Robust internal controls focused on cybersecurity, biosecurity, chemical threats, and preventing unintended system access 2 An empowered internal team to ensure those controls actually work 3 Independent external auditors 4 An independent board

Spain's inflation just hit 4.9% YoY. Don't read it as a Spanish story. Inflation is global, and bond markets are treating it that way. Sovereign yields are rising across developed economies because investors want more compensation for holding duration when price pressure isn't fading. Both inflation and yields are joining the 5% club. Here's why Spain matters. As a eurozone member, it can't set its own rate response. It inherits ECB policy, so when inflation runs hot in a maj

Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington wrapped up Friday with limited deliverables. The pageantry was loud, and the substance was quiet. The Three main takeaways for global markets are: 1. The trade truce was settled before the leaders sat down. The main question, whether to extend the fragile truce from last fall, was resolved before the official meeting. The summit was mostly about optics. 2. The hard issues are still open. The summit showed how little progress there's been

Over the past two to three years, global refining capacity has taken a serious hit, and the effects are rippling through diesel and gasoline markets worldwide. Russia's refining collapse Since March 2024, Ukrainian drone strikes have systematically targeted Russian refineries — Ryazan (nearly 5% of national output), Syzran, Saratov, and others. Ryazan alone has been hit nine times in 2025. The cumulative effect: Russian crude processing has fallen to its lowest level in 21 ye

Six days. That's all that separates the next Fed decision from the midterms. On October 28, the FOMC announces its rate call, six days before Election Day (Nov 3). And if you're wondering whether the Fed would really move that close to an election: it already did this year. On September 16, it hiked 25 bps to 3.75–4.00% — its first increase in three years — with projections pointing to another by year-end. So what happens when the Fed hikes right before midterms? History giv

A month ago, the market was pricing roughly 27% odds of another Fed rate move at the October 28 FOMC. Today, that number sits near 70%, which historically has given the Fed confidence the market will not be surprised by the actions (hike in this case) and will not create chaos. How did we get here: PPI and CPI prints in early September pushed odds toward 50%. The September FOMC meeting itself, where the Fed hiked to a 3.75%-4.00% target, reset the baseline higher. And a strin

Washington wants three things. It can't fully have all three 1️⃣ Help Japan defend the yen, and keep Tokyo from selling Treasuries to do it 2️⃣ Stop long-term rates from rising 3️⃣ Defend the dollar This is the context as of today: the 10-year yield has surged above 5.15%, which is a normal level in historical standards, but it’s the highest since 2007. The Fed just raised rates for the first time in three years. And the U.S. joined Japan in buying yen, its first such move wi

The U.S. Fixed income market isn't just one number. It's a ladder, and not only in terms of maturity, but also in terms of credit quality, liquidity and complexity, and right now each rung is telling a different story: Take q look a the chart below; there is nearly a 5-point spread between cash and private credit — the widest gap tells you how much the market is charging for duration, credit risk, and illiquidity today. Money market yields track short-term policy rates almost

While headlines focus on crude oil, diesel/gasoil is the fuel that actually keeps the world moving: trucks, ships, tractors, generators. And right now, global export flows are trending well below their 5-year range. The two wars (Ukraine and Iran) are causing great damage to the global economy: 1- Russia — historically a top diesel exporter — is weighing a full export ban on top of existing restrictions, after attacks on its refineries and supply networks pushed its domestic

Europe just moved on two fronts of its digital euro strategy, wholesale and retail. This week, at the Eurogroup meeting in Dublin, ECB President Christine Lagarde announced the launch of "Pontes" — a DLT-based settlement tool connecting bank platforms to TARGET services, letting banks settle wholesale transactions in central bank money. It's live essentially immediately. But it's plumbing for banks, not a currency for consumers. The consumer-facing digital euro — the electron

Look at the chart below: 10-year sovereign bond yields across the Eurozone are climbing back toward levels not seen since the 2022 energy shock, and spreads over Bunds are widening again for Italy, Greece, and Portugal. This time, France is the problematic child. This isn't 2020's "whatever it takes" moment, and it's not quite 2022's emergency ECB meeting either. It's something slower and, in some ways, more structural: Energy & geopolitics. The war in Ukraine never fully rec

Two data points collided this week that used to be considered mutually exclusive: 1- The US 10-year yield closed at exactly 5.00% on September 15 — a level that had never once been reached simultaneously with $100 Brent crude in over 9,700 trading sessions dating back to 1987. It has now. 2- Meanwhile France's 10-year sits at 4.54%, closing the gap with the US in a way that would have seemed absurd a decade ago, when French debt traded inside 1% and was treated as near-Bund q

The Bank of Japan raised its policy rate 25bps to 1.25% today (Sept 18), the latest step in what Governor Ueda is calling a genuine "regime change" away from ultra-easy policy. On paper, that should be yen-supportive. Instead, USD/JPY weakened, because the Fed just delivered its own hawkish hike, and futures markets are now pricing three more Fed moves by mid-2027. That keeps the US-Japan rate differential wide even as Tokyo tightens. Add persistent fiscal concerns in Japan a

A big 48 hours for global monetary policy. Three major central banks moved this week, and the divergence says a lot about where the world stands right now. 🇺🇸 Federal Reserve — HIKE (25bp → 3.75%–4.00%) Chair Kevin Warsh delivered a rate increase since taking the helm, citing inflation that remains "sticky." His message: the Fed can't control individual prices like oil, but it can and will stop relative price shocks from broadening into the wider economy. True to form, Wars

The CLARITY Act just failed cloture in the Senate, 49-50. Barely a rounding error from the 60 votes it needed, and yet it's now effectively dead for 2026. Here's why that matters well beyond crypto world. The bill wasn't just about market structure for digital assets. It was the regulatory scaffolding the Treasury has been quietly counting on to grow a new buyer base for U.S. debt: stablecoin issuers. Under the GENIUS Act framework, issuers back their tokens largely with shor

The Treasury curve is sending a message worth sitting with. As of today, the 10-year note is trading around 5.04% (its highest level since 2007) and the 30-year bond is above 5.38%. The 2-year sits near 4.69%. That's the entire long end of the curve, from 10 years out to 30, camped above the psychologically important 5% threshold. A few things stand out: 1- This isn't a one-day spike. Yields have climbed steadily over the past month, with the 10-year up roughly 30 basis point

This is one of the more unusual macro weeks in years: the Fed, the ECB and the BOJ are all leaning toward tighter policy at the same time, while Brazil's Copom is expected to keep cutting. Here's the picture heading into a heavy run of central bank decisions. 🇺🇸 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 August CPI came in hot: headline +0.4% m/m (3.4% y/y), core +0.3% m/m (2.4% y/y), both a touch above forecasts. Gasoline (+3.9% m/m, +27.4% y/y) did most of the damage as energy prices reac

Dario Amodei just made a move most CEOs never make: he asked his own industry to slow down. In his new essay, "We Must Pace the Frontier," the Anthropic CEO argues that AI capability is advancing faster than our ability to understand, align, and safely deploy it. His proposal isn't a moratorium — it's a three-part framework: radical transparency (Anthropic is giving third-party evaluators permanent, employee-level access to its systems), coordination among democratic AI labs

Yesterday's CPI print didn't calm anything down — it just raised the stakes for next week's Fed meeting. Core inflation came in roughly in line with forecasts but ticked lower, yet that wasn't enough to shake the market's growing conviction that the Fed hikes rather than holds. Odds of a hike at the September 15-16 meeting jumped to around 91% this week, a striking reversal from the "will they cut" conversation that's dominated headlines for years. The 10-year Treasury yield

How many hikes would it actually take to control inflation (if that’s the intention) and what would it cost? The Fed meets September 15–16, and for the first time in years, markets are pricing in real odds of a hike rather than a cut. Fed funds futures have this above 70%. Core PCE inflation is running around 3.3%, still above target, and Chair Kevin Warsh has signaled he's not satisfied with "good enough." So, if the Fed decided hiking was the priority, how many would it tak