Chris Wright, the U.S. energy secretary, said last week that the Trump administration plans to oversee Venezuela’s oil output “indefinitely” and will “sell the production that comes out of Venezuela into the marketplace,” just days after the U.S.’s kidnapping of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro.
ECONOMIC UPDATE – MARKET OVERVIEW
The big news in the U.S. today was the inflation report. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.3 percent in December.
THE U.S. HAS BECOME A HYPER-DEBT REGIME ON A GALACTIC LEVEL. (AMERICA IS DYING).
What’s missing from the headlines as of late? ANY talk of recession… its just gone.
DOLLAR’S VALUE RETREATS AS WHITE HOUSE INVESTIGATES FED CHAIR
On 12 January, the U.S. dollar ended a five-day streak of gains in its value on news that Donald Trump’s justice department has opened a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve.
BASED TECH
Call it a backlash against the DeHuman downsides of AI, the encroachments of ever-more granular surveillance and data scraping, or a desire to simply have tech that just works without unneeded complication.
IRAN BLAMES U.S., ISRAEL FOR DEATHS TIED TO ANTI-GOVERNMENT PROTESTS
The Iranian government blamed outside agitators tied to the U.S. and Israel for the violence that has broken out during the country’s anti-government protests and told local news outlets that Tehran has “experienced firsthand how the urban terrorist criminals committed ISIS-like violence.”
TRUMP: I DON’T NEED INTERNATIONAL LAW, GUIDED BY ‘MY OWN MORALITY’
President Donald Trump gave an interview to The New York Times last week shortly after the U.S. invasion to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and was asked if there are any “limits on his global powers,” and he responded: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
Global Economy
GOING OUT OF BUSINESS TRENDS
More than 700 U.S. businesses filed for bankruptcy in 2025, the highest number since 2010, according to marketrealist.com.
WHEN THE ECONOMY FALLS, JOBS GO WITH IT
U.S. employers expanded payrolls by 50,000 jobs in December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics December jobs report.
SPOTLIGHT: BIGS GETTING BIGGER
Hedge funds added $682 billion to their wealth in 2025, a record, as well-heeled investors shifted away from private equity and sought to balance their exposure to soaring stock markets amid growing fears of a bubble.
U.S. Economy
EXPECT THREE FED RATE CUTS BY JULY, MOODY’S CHIEF ECONOMIST SAYS
To counter labor market weakness and respond to political pressure, the U.S. Federal Reserve will cut a quarter point from its key interest rate three times by midyear, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics has forecast.
TRUMP WANTS INVESTORS BANNED FROM SINGLE FAMILY HOUSING MARKET
Donald Trump said he will ask the U.S. Congress to ban large institutional investors from buying single-family homes.
CAR BUYERS ARE TAKING OUT EIGHT-YEAR LOANS
U.S. car prices have grown by 33 percent since the COVID War began and the average selling price surpassed $50,000 this fall, compared to $38,000 in early 2020, according to pricing standard Kelley Blue Book.
Trends in AI
AI BIGS ARE COMING FOR GOOGLE
Google now owns an estimated two-thirds of the worldwide search engine market and 90 percent in the U.S.—but maybe not for long.
AI WILL REPLACE 200,000 EUROPEAN BANK WORKERS BY 2030
Over the next four years, European banks could replace as many as 200,000 employees—about 10 percent of their payrolls—as more people bank online and the banks close branches to cut costs, Morgan Stanley analysts have forecasted after interviewing executives at 35 institutions.
DEEPSEEK REPORTS AI TRAINING BREAKTHROUGH
In a newly published paper, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek has detailed a new approach to training AI models it calls “Manifold-Constrained Hyper-Connections.” The method allows training larger and larger AIs while reducing needed computer time and, therefore, energy consumption.
Hi-Tech Science
A PRINTABLE ALUMINUM THAT’S FIVE TIMES STRONGER
Now there’s another good reason to recycle those aluminum cans.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, materials scientists have developed an aluminum alloy that can be 3D-printed, stands up under extreme heat, and has tested at five times the strength of commercial aluminum made in the customary way.
A MISSING FAT MAY BE KEY IN COMBATING DEMENTIA
Researchers at the University of Vermont’s medical school have found that replacing a missing fat in the brain may be a key to preventing—and even reversing—some common forms of dementia, a condition afflicting an estimated 50 million and growing number of people worldwide.
ELECTRONIC SKIN LETS ROBOTS FEEL INJURY AND RECOIL FROM HARM
While this instinctive, instantaneous response is innate in humans, it has been a struggle to develop a pain reflex in robots.