https://the-variables.com/en/authors/the-variables Analysis from the editorial desk of The Variables. en https://the-variables.com/en/articles/watch-this-variable-the-dollars-shrinking-share-of-reserves https://the-variables.com/en/articles/watch-this-variable-the-dollars-shrinking-share-of-reserves Sun, 20 Sep 2026 04:26:35 GMT The Variables The dollar holds about 57% of reported reserves, down from over 70% at the century's start; central banks bought over 1,000 tonnes of gold for three straight years, and gold crossed $4,000 in 2025. Nothing here says collapse. Everything says erosion, and the pace is the variable. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/watch-this-variable-ais-725-billion-bill-against-its-revenue https://the-variables.com/en/articles/watch-this-variable-ais-725-billion-bill-against-its-revenue Sun, 20 Sep 2026 04:21:58 GMT The Variables Four companies plan roughly $725 billion of AI infrastructure spending in 2026, up 77% in a year. The largest pure AI vendor books tens of billions and loses money doing it. The ratio between those numbers is the most consequential open variable in markets, and this page will track it. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/chinas-emissions-may-have-peaked-the-evidence-is-21-months-long https://the-variables.com/en/articles/chinas-emissions-may-have-peaked-the-evidence-is-21-months-long Sun, 20 Sep 2026 04:18:06 GMT The Variables The world's largest emitter has been flat or falling since March 2024, and 2025 closed 0.3% down, the first decline driven by clean energy rather than economic weakness. If it holds, the world's most important emissions curve turned five years early. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/the-first-year-past-15c-has-come-and-gone-now-it-is-an-average https://the-variables.com/en/articles/the-first-year-past-15c-has-come-and-gone-now-it-is-an-average Sun, 20 Sep 2026 04:13:30 GMT The Variables 2024 finished at 1.60C above pre-industrial, the first calendar year beyond the Paris marker; 2025 came in at 1.47C, and the last three years together averaged above 1.5C, another first. In treaty terms the threshold is intact. On current warming rates, it will not stay that way for long. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/world-military-spending-hit-29-trillion-the-surprise-is-who-cut https://the-variables.com/en/articles/world-military-spending-hit-29-trillion-the-surprise-is-who-cut Sun, 20 Sep 2026 03:43:22 GMT The Variables SIPRI's 2025 numbers: an eleventh straight record year, Europe up 14%, Germany up 24%, Ukraine at 40% of its own GDP, and NATO signed up to 5% targets by 2035. The one major spender that fell: the United States, down 7.5%. The rearmament is real, and it is changing hands. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/in-2024-every-rich-world-incumbent-lost-ground-then-prices-cooled https://the-variables.com/en/articles/in-2024-every-rich-world-incumbent-lost-ground-then-prices-cooled Sun, 20 Sep 2026 03:38:40 GMT The Variables Two billion people voted in the biggest election year in history, and for the first time in about 120 years of records, every governing party facing a developed-world electorate lost vote share. The pattern had one overwhelming correlate, and 2025's elections began testing whether it fades with it. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/the-biggest-capital-flow-to-the-developing-world-is-wages https://the-variables.com/en/articles/the-biggest-capital-flow-to-the-developing-world-is-wages Sun, 20 Sep 2026 03:33:46 GMT The Variables Remittances reached $685 billion in 2024, more than foreign investment and aid to developing countries combined. India received $129 billion; Morocco's diaspora sent home 8% of GDP. The world's most reliable development finance is transferred $200 at a time, minus a 6.5% toll. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/most-of-humanity-now-lives-where-births-fall-short-of-replacement https://the-variables.com/en/articles/most-of-humanity-now-lives-where-births-fall-short-of-replacement Sun, 20 Sep 2026 03:29:38 GMT The Variables The UN counts 131 countries, home to 68% of the world's people, with fertility below 2.1. The global rate is 2.25 and falling; South Korea touched 0.72 before its first uptick in nine years. The largest quiet variable in every economic forecast, read from the birth registers. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/singapore-has-no-oil-or-minerals-yet-sells-more-than-a-sixth-of-the-worlds-shipping-fuel https://the-variables.com/en/articles/singapore-has-no-oil-or-minerals-yet-sells-more-than-a-sixth-of-the-worlds-shipping-fuel Sat, 15 Aug 2026 17:07:39 GMT The Variables The island imports its crude, its gas, and at times its sand and fresh water. In 2025 it sold a record 56.77 million tonnes of marine fuel, more than the next five ports combined, from a position built on a strait, two refinery complexes, and a meter no other port required first. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/a-drought-throttled-the-panama-canal-from-36-passages-a-day-to-24-for-lack-of-rain https://the-variables.com/en/articles/a-drought-throttled-the-panama-canal-from-36-passages-a-day-to-24-for-lack-of-rain Sat, 15 Aug 2026 17:05:05 GMT The Variables El Nino cut daily transits from 36 to 18 and sent slot auctions to records. The rains came back, revenue hit $5.7 billion, and the canal is buying itself a second watershed. What the 2023-24 drought proved about infrastructure that drinks. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/vietnams-105-billion-trade-surplus-with-america-is-bought-with-163-billion-of-imports-from-china https://the-variables.com/en/articles/vietnams-105-billion-trade-surplus-with-america-is-bought-with-163-billion-of-imports-from-china Sat, 15 Aug 2026 17:01:39 GMT The Variables Vietnam set records on both sides of its ledger in 2025: the largest surplus any country but China runs with America, and record imports from China of $186 billion. A 20% tariff, a 40% transshipment clause, and one Korean company worth 13% of GDP later, the balancing act is the economy. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/the-us-chips-law-poured-concrete-whether-the-concrete-will-produce-chips-is-still-unknown https://the-variables.com/en/articles/the-us-chips-law-poured-concrete-whether-the-concrete-will-produce-chips-is-still-unknown Sat, 15 Aug 2026 16:57:45 GMT The Variables Three years in: $30.7 billion awarded, nearly $450 billion of private projects announced, 4-nanometre production running in Arizona, and the law's biggest single bet converted into a 9.9% government stake in Intel. An audit of what the CHIPS Act has actually built, and what has slipped. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/morocco-holds-the-worlds-largest-phosphate-reserves-but-cars-now-bring-in-more-revenue https://the-variables.com/en/articles/morocco-holds-the-worlds-largest-phosphate-reserves-but-cars-now-bring-in-more-revenue Sat, 15 Aug 2026 16:54:00 GMT The Variables The country with the world's largest phosphate reserves now earns more from vehicles than from the mineral its economy was named for. A production record, a port that leads the Mediterranean, and a battery factory that brings the phosphate back in a different form. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/fusion-crossed-a-real-line-in-2022-it-still-is-not-on-track-to-power-anything-this-decade-or-the-next https://the-variables.com/en/articles/fusion-crossed-a-real-line-in-2022-it-still-is-not-on-track-to-power-anything-this-decade-or-the-next Sat, 15 Aug 2026 16:51:21 GMT The Variables The National Ignition Facility has now ignited eight times, once at four times energy gain. Private funding passed $14 billion, ITER slipped to the 2030s, and the first private machine aiming at net energy switches on next. A status report on the oldest promise in energy. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/nitrogen-fertilizer-is-transformed-gas-in-2022-europe-shut-down-70-of-its-ammonia-capacity https://the-variables.com/en/articles/nitrogen-fertilizer-is-transformed-gas-in-2022-europe-shut-down-70-of-its-ammonia-capacity Sat, 15 Aug 2026 16:48:29 GMT The Variables In 2022, gas prices shut 70% of Europe's ammonia capacity in a season. The crisis passed; the closures kept coming, and now a carbon border tax meets an industry that already moved offshore. How bread became a derivative of the gas market, and what Europe eats instead of making. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/the-tariffs-on-chinese-goods-were-paid-almost-entirely-by-americans-not-by-china https://the-variables.com/en/articles/the-tariffs-on-chinese-goods-were-paid-almost-entirely-by-americans-not-by-china Sat, 15 Aug 2026 16:43:40 GMT The Variables The 2018-19 trade war produced a rare thing in economics: an unusually clear answer. Import prices did not fall; the tariff landed on US firms and households. Now the effective rate is 16.8%, the highest since 1935, the average household is out about $1,700 a year, and the same measurements are being made again. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/most-of-the-worlds-advanced-chips-come-from-one-company-on-one-island-and-its-share-is-rising https://the-variables.com/en/articles/most-of-the-worlds-advanced-chips-come-from-one-company-on-one-island-and-its-share-is-rising Sat, 15 Aug 2026 16:40:42 GMT The Variables TSMC held about 70% of the world's foundry market in 2025, and at the leading edge the share is closer to all of it. The 2-nanometre generation is sold out through 2028, the $165 billion Arizona hedge is real but partial, and the concentration is not an accident. It is the business model. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/nuclear-is-building-again-and-most-of-it-is-in-china-the-western-showcase-cost-four-times-its-price https://the-variables.com/en/articles/nuclear-is-building-again-and-most-of-it-is-in-china-the-western-showcase-cost-four-times-its-price Sat, 15 Aug 2026 16:36:57 GMT The Variables 78 gigawatts of reactors are under construction worldwide, the most in decades, and half the capacity is Chinese, approved at a metronomic ten reactors a year. The West, meanwhile, finished two projects a decade late and started selling reactors to data centres. An audit of the revival. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/solar-and-wind-won-the-price-war-firming-them-for-the-hours-they-go-quiet-is-the-unfinished-half https://the-variables.com/en/articles/solar-and-wind-won-the-price-war-firming-them-for-the-hours-they-go-quiet-is-the-unfinished-half Sat, 15 Aug 2026 16:32:57 GMT The Variables The world added a record 647 GW of solar in 2025, and the argument moved to the hours the sun misses. Then batteries fell 45% in a year and deployment hit 250 GWh. An update on the firming problem, which is quietly being solved by the same cost curve that created it. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/the-export-ban-that-built-an-industry-indonesia-now-produces-60-of-the-worlds-nickel https://the-variables.com/en/articles/the-export-ban-that-built-an-industry-indonesia-now-produces-60-of-the-worlds-nickel Sat, 15 Aug 2026 16:29:45 GMT The Variables Two smelters in 2014, fifty-nine by 2025. Processed-nickel exports up from under $1 billion a year to about $14 billion. Sixty percent of world production. The most cited industrial policy of the decade also crashed the price it depends on, and now the same state is cutting quotas to fix that. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/chiles-lithium-the-worlds-largest-reserve-moves-to-state-control-not-by-decree-but-by-partnership https://the-variables.com/en/articles/chiles-lithium-the-worlds-largest-reserve-moves-to-state-control-not-by-decree-but-by-partnership Sat, 15 Aug 2026 16:25:13 GMT The Variables The Salar de Atacama holds 9.2 million tonnes of lithium in brine, the biggest such reserve on earth. In December 2025, a Codelco-SQM joint venture handed the Chilean state majority control of it through 2060, in the middle of the worst lithium price crash on record. Most resource nationalism is announced at the top of the cycle; this deal was signed at the bottom. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/in-response-to-chip-controls-china-turned-to-gallium-and-germanium-it-produces-almost-all-of-both https://the-variables.com/en/articles/in-response-to-chip-controls-china-turned-to-gallium-and-germanium-it-produces-almost-all-of-both Sat, 15 Aug 2026 15:14:46 GMT The Variables Washington restricts what China can buy; Beijing restricts what America can make it from. Gallium, 98% Chinese, and germanium, majority Chinese, went from licensing in 2023 to an outright US ban in December 2024. Germanium has quintupled since 2023. The tonnages are tiny, but the precedent reaches much further. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/morocco-holds-two-thirds-of-the-worlds-phosphate-reserves-but-produces-only-one-eighth https://the-variables.com/en/articles/morocco-holds-two-thirds-of-the-worlds-phosphate-reserves-but-produces-only-one-eighth Sat, 15 Aug 2026 15:10:07 GMT The Variables The US Geological Survey counts 50 of the world's 73 billion tonnes of phosphate reserves in Morocco, and 36 of the 250 million tonnes mined in 2025. The gap between owning the element food depends on and monetising it is the whole strategy of the Moroccan state's largest company. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/the-netherlands-shut-down-europes-largest-gas-field-while-reserves-remained-the-reason-was-not-geological https://the-variables.com/en/articles/the-netherlands-shut-down-europes-largest-gas-field-while-reserves-remained-the-reason-was-not-geological Sat, 15 Aug 2026 15:05:43 GMT The Variables Groningen closed by law on 19 April 2024 with hundreds of billions of cubic metres still underground, because the ground above it would not stop shaking. A democracy chose earthquakes over energy in the middle of an energy crisis. The bill, the lawsuits, and the lesson. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/the-congo-produces-76-of-the-worlds-cobalt-in-2025-it-halted-exports-and-prices-rose https://the-variables.com/en/articles/the-congo-produces-76-of-the-worlds-cobalt-in-2025-it-halted-exports-and-prices-rose Sat, 15 Aug 2026 15:01:00 GMT The Variables In February 2025 the DRC suspended cobalt exports outright; since October it rations them by quota, at roughly half the old volume. The price of the metal rose 130% in a year. What the world's most concentrated mineral supply does when the supplier starts acting like one. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/data-centres-are-under-3-of-the-worlds-electricity-and-22-of-irelands https://the-variables.com/en/articles/data-centres-are-under-3-of-the-worlds-electricity-and-22-of-irelands Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:54:30 GMT The Variables The IEA counts 415 TWh of data-centre demand in 2024, doubling to 945 TWh by 2030. The global average is modest; the local concentrations are not. What the gap between those two numbers does to grids, prices, and the places that said yes early. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/serving-a-gpt-35-class-model-got-280-times-cheaper-building-a-frontier-one-crossed-100-million https://the-variables.com/en/articles/serving-a-gpt-35-class-model-got-280-times-cheaper-building-a-frontier-one-crossed-100-million Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:51:10 GMT The Variables A GPT-3-class answer cost $60 per million tokens in 2021 and six cents by late 2024. Meanwhile the price of training a frontier model grows 2.4x a year, toward billion-dollar runs. One industry, two curves, running in opposite directions, and every business model in AI lives in the gap. https://the-variables.com/en/articles/china-builds-a-battery-pack-for-84-europe-pays-half-again-as-much https://the-variables.com/en/articles/china-builds-a-battery-pack-for-84-europe-pays-half-again-as-much Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:43:03 GMT The Variables BNEF's 2025 survey puts the average pack at a record-low $108 per kilowatt-hour, China at $84, and North America and Europe 44% and 56% above that. Two companies install a majority of the world's EV batteries. The cost gap is the industrial policy question of the decade, quantified.