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.
Sep 20, 2026 · 8 min read
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.
Sep 20, 2026 · 8 min read
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.
Sep 20, 2026 · 7 min read
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.
Sep 20, 2026 · 8 min read
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.
Sep 20, 2026 · 7 min read
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.
Sep 20, 2026 · 7 min read
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.
Sep 20, 2026 · 8 min read
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.
Sep 20, 2026 · 7 min read
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.
Aug 15, 2026 · 8 min read
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.
Aug 15, 2026 · 8 min read
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.
Aug 15, 2026 · 7 min read
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.
Aug 15, 2026 · 7 min read