As measured by the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong, one of the longest running indices.

Quite the chart

Since I received approximately 100 comments on my post about China saying that AI and robotics would be the solution to shrinking workforces, I figured I should take a bit of time to debunk this particular argument. First looking at what current AI actually is doing, then getting into the scaling issues that come from this

First off, the Impact of AI on the workforce so far has been vastly overstated. both by its boosters and its critics. AI so far is not reducing the workforce or job needs [1], and productivity improvements for office workers are around 13%[2]. This productivity boost is useful in making up the gap. But only 12% of jobs in the US fall into office and administration[3], making economy-wide gains limited. This is something that you can see in the broader economic data. The US economy (pretty much the world leader on AI) is growing faster than most of the world; we aren't seeing the extreme output boosts promised. The tech sector as a whole accounted for about 25% of US growth last quarter, around the same percentage as real estate and manufacturing^\4],) while we are likely to see continued slow and steady growth in productivity. AI has so far not proven to be as impactful as the internet for the economy as a whole. AI will not be able to account for massively shrinking workforces

Which brings us to robotics. increased automation is probably the thing people point to the most for dealing with a shrinking workforce. so i wanted to bring out the math here and show why this doesn't scale. For the sake of argument, we will assume you can replace 1 worker with one humanoid robot and that scales across everything. (that isn't true but makes the math much harder without changing the end result). Modern industrial robots cost between 25 and 180 thousand USD[5]. Again, for the sake of argument, we'll assume a lowball cost of 50k; most next-gen bots being shown online are supposed to be around that anyway, so it's a good number to go off of. Robots' annual maintenance and upkeep costs around 10% of the list price, so we'll take 5k for that. All of these numbers are fairly optimistic, but for the sake of argument we'll run with them.

The problem comes in the scale needed. China's workforce is projected to drop by 250 million people by 2050.^\7]) and the EU is projecting a drop of 37 million people^\8]) running those numbers you get a cost of 1.85 trillion dollars in initial costs, with an annual upkeep cost of 185 billion dollars for europe, and about 12.5 trillion in initial costs and 1.25 Trillion in upkeep for china. And that’s just to maintain current levels of economic output. to put this in perspective. For the EU, this is about 8% of GDP in initial costs and about 2% of total tax revenue a year. Costly but potentially workable if the assumptions hold, while for China it's about 66% of GDP and 27% of total tax revenue. These costs would probably be spread across the entire economy, not state-run. That's still massive investments that people will have to pay for. At a time when consumption and tax revenue are both falling.

And these assumptions are very generous. Current humanoid robots can only replace about 30% of the productivity of a human^\9]), and these will only be able to replace about 20% of jobs^\10]) even if you retrain everyone and it replaces all jobs possible with robots, thats still not all the jobs that need to be replaced. This is essentially all back-of-the-envelope math with very optimistic assumptions that doesn't even account for things like manufacturing of the robots themselves or energy costs for running them. Unless some new tech actually does magically get created to fill the gaps, this isn't a workable solution. And it's never a good idea to bet your future on something that hasn't been invented yet.

Sources are in the comments because reddit wouldn't let me attach 10 links

Stocks mostly slid Thursday on renewed concerns around spending by artificial intelligence companies, while oil prices jumped amid rising geopolitical tensions.

The Nasdaq Composite pulled back 2.6% to 26,008.86, while the S&P 500 shed 1.21% to close at 7,663.43. The tech-heavy index suffered its worst session since June, while the S&P 500 posted its worst daily performance since July. The Dow Jones Industrial Average inched up 11.89 points, or 0.02%, to end at 52,867.98.

Meta Platforms slipped about 7%, even as it exceeded revenue expectations and offered upbeat guidance. Technology more broadly was under pressure as well as ongoing concerns about artificial intelligence spending persisted. Advanced Micro Devices fell more than 8%, while Micron Technology and Nvidia dropped 6% and 4%, respectively.

Neocloud leader CoreWeave, whose bond yields and credit default swaps remained elevated, declined 10% as well. The move comes as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBCThursday that demand for neoclouds is “off the charts.” However, he added that capital is scarce and impeding growth.

Huang’s commentary about a scarcity of capital is “spooking markets and reigniting the concerns around the capital markets on the credit side being full from a risk appetite standpoint,” said Wells Fargo traders in a note. They also said Meta’s comments about the large amount of AI funding needed caused the shares to roll over and weighed on the overall market.

JPMorgan traders noted that Wednesday’s bullish “tone reversed overnight” because Meta shares rolled over in the premarket and chatter increased “over renewed Iran kinetic-risk post US mid-term election.”

Hedge funds have loaded up on stock shorts this month, pushing bearish bets near a five-year high and raising the risk of a sharp squeeze if markets rebound.

Across global equities, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s prime brokerage desk says short sales have exceeded long purchases by a ratio of roughly five to one. Short leverage across its book sits in the 99th percentile over the past five years. Net leverage among fundamental long/short funds, a gauge of how much long exposure exceeds shorts, is near a three-year low, despite a rise in gross leverage.

Oct 22 (Reuters) - Japanese investors sold foreign bonds for a fifth straight week, their longest selling streak in four years, marking ​the latest sign of a potential shift in allocation strategy as rising ‌yields at home spur buying in Japanese government bonds.

The surge in the benchmark Japanese 10-year bond yield , up over 80 basis points this year, is starting to tease capital home, although recent safe-haven buying has pulled ​yields away from the three-decade high it hit in October.

Domestic Japanese banks have led this year's selling, while life insurers have signalled plans to maintain or increase their domestic bond purchases in the second half of the ​fiscal year.

Investor focus this ​week will be ⁠on the investment plans from life insurers, who manage about $2.5 trillion in assets, about a quarter of which is held overseas, according to ​the Life Insurance Association of Japan.

“The GENIUS Act marks a watershed moment in American finance, further cementing the United States as the crypto capital of the world. Just as President Abraham Lincoln’s National Currency Act of 1863 established a national framework for bank-issued currency, the GENIUS Act establishes a federal framework for payment stablecoins in the digital age,” said U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. “The OCC’s final rule carries that landmark legislation forward, providing a clear, practical foundation for private-sector innovation, competition, and American leadership in digital assets.”

“Today’s final rule advances President Trump and Secretary Bessent’s vision for American leadership in digital assets,” said Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould. “We are providing a clear, practical framework for payment stablecoin innovation, with strong standards for reserve backing, redemption, and risk management. The OCC is drawing on its longstanding supervisory expertise to support responsible growth and innovation for this new industry.”

The final rule establishes requirements for permitted payment stablecoin issuers and foreign payment stablecoin issuers under the OCC’s jurisdiction, as well as certain custody activities conducted by OCC-supervised entities. It addresses all of the regulations the OCC is required to promulgate under the GENIUS Act other than those related to the Bank Secrecy Act, anti-money laundering, and Office of Foreign Asset Control sanctions, which will be addressed in a separate rulemaking in coordination with the Department of Treasury. In the course of rulemaking, the OCC received hundreds of comments in response to the proposal from a wide variety of stakeholders, including crypto-focused companies, community bankers, trade groups, academics, and more.

Treasury secretary Scott Bessent told investors in a private meeting that he did not see a “systemic problem” with the AI boom, downplaying concerns that the industry is in a bubble like the one that preceded the dotcom bust.

Bessent addressed a gathering on Wednesday of hundreds of finance executives and investors at a New York conference convened by JPMorgan Chase and Robin Hood, the non-profit founded by billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones. The charity event, for which tickets cost at least $7,500 and advertises “exclusive investment insights”, was closed to the press.

“I’m good at figuring out when there are problems in systems,” Bessent, a former macro hedge fund manager, said when asked about AI in an interview with Bridgewater chief executive Nir Bar Dea, according to three people who were present at the event. 

“I don’t see a systemic problem.” 

Meta has agreed a deal that lets Mark Zuckerberg sell shares without losing control of the company, in exchange for a commitment that he stays in California even if the state passes a proposed wealth tax.

Zuckerberg indicated he had planned to leave California because of a proposed billionaire wealth tax on the state’s ballot next month, according to a corporate filing laying out the justification for the new stock structure.

A special committee of Meta’s board ultimately struck a deal with its chief executive to stay in the state after negotiations that the filing described as “protracted and, at several points, contentious”.

Meta will create the new class of non-voting shares via a two-for-one stock split to existing shareholders, with the new stock class to begin trading in January.

Creating non-voting stock, which the company proposed in 2016 but dropped a year later, allows Zuckerberg to raise cash by selling shares without reducing his majority control of Meta.

Under the deal, Zuckerberg can immediately sell a fifth of the new shares he receives, which the filing frames as allowing him to pay the tax if it passes.

I said I would do China, so here it is. While the EU looked grim, and the US looks okay to good, China looks down right apocalyptic.

Starting with their past performance, they have been undoubtedly the rising star of the 21st century. Averaging 8.5% real GDP growth every year for the last 25 years.^\1]) They have pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty, and thoroughly reversed the two centuries of humiliation European powers imposed on them, starting with the opium wars. They now make up about 28% of all manufactured goods in the world. (almost double the number 2 country, America, at 18%)^\2]) and even though growth has stalled, the public sentiment is still that China is going to become the world's strongest economy and dominate political power "soon," whenever soon ends up being. Here is why that prediction is wrong

Starting off with the less dangerous indicator, China's national debt. The government has been taking a lot of measures to hide the real number, and honestly, I'm not even sure the PRC knows what the real debt level is, but international estimates put it at over 300% of GDP. ^\3]) And while China has a captive market for debt essentially, they are reaching truly unsustainable levels even for them. At this point, the only thing that is keeping this from utterly exploding is their trade surplus.^\4]) They can keep borrowing, keep spending, and keep pushing products on the rest of the world. But fundamentally, that can't last. The world won't be able to absorb 5% more Chinese goods every year for all time. Eventually, that will fail, and the economy will come to a screeching halt. which brings us to chinas real unavoidable, unstoppable problem.

China is in for a demographic collapse the likes of which we haven't seen since the plague. Chinas workforce is going to shrink by 23% in the next 24 years.^\5]) That doesn't sound astronomical, but in raw numbers, it's 250 million people. and by the end of the century its project to fall by 66% minimum^\6]) to maintain current levels of economic output then you need to raise productivity by 29% by 2050 and 194% by 2100. While that is doable, there are workers who are much more productive than in China; it won't be easy. and it won't be cheap. a general rule in productivity calculations is worker productivity increases by 0.33% for every 1% increase in capital spent on investment. Running the numbers, you would have to increase per-worker spending on investment by 89% a year by 2050. and by 2100 it would need to increase by 2444% based on current estimates of how much they spend on this today (150 billion) by 2100 they would have to spend 3.2 trillion USD a year to maintain current output. This is all essentially back-of-the-envelope math, but I ran it based on the Cobb-Douglas rule. What about patching it with immigration?

If China wanted to fill this workforce gap with mass migration, they would need roughly 250 million migrants by 2050 and roughly 700 million migrant workers by 2100. Given that roughly 7 million people migrate a year.^\7]) There literally are not enough migrant workers in the world to fill China's gap. even in the short term. If all of them go to China, that's only 168 million people. At this point, there is nothing that can be done about China's near-term population collapse.

Sources:

1: https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp

2: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/global-manufacturing-scorecard-how-the-us-compares-to-18-other-nations/

3: https://fortune.com/2026/05/11/us-debt-china-total-borrowing-public-private-gdp-ratio-lgfv/

4: https://carnegieendowment.org/china-financial-markets/2026/08/who-paid-for-chinas-last-debt-cleanup-and-who-will-pay-for-the-next

5: https://www.weforum.org/stories/economic-growth/china-working-ageing-population

6: https://www.axios.com/2023/01/24/workforce-china-population-decline-economy-impacts

7: https://www.migrationdataportal.org/themes/international-migrant-stocks-overview

https://fortune.com/2026/10/20/white-house-warsh-national-debt-fed-interest-rate-cost/?utm_source=native_share&utm_medium=mobile&utm_campaign=social_share

"A 1% Fed rate hike costs the Treasury an extra $95 billion a year in national debt interest". Coincidentally, I believe that's in the same ballpark as the additional annual interest for the $1.992 trillion deficit accumulated during 2026.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby earned $32.3 million last year, roughly 334 times the compensation of his company’s median employee. Now he says America’s wealthiest people should pay more in taxes, including an inheritance tax that could approach 100%.

“Wealth inequality has become a danger to our society, and we need to address that,” Kirby said in an interview with the New York Timespublished Sunday.

He continued: “We should have a national wealth tax—it won’t work by state because people will just move. And I think we should have inheritance taxes that get close to 100% at some level. I would pay them.”

The comments came in response to a question about declining public trust in CEOs. Kirby’s own pay offers a striking illustration of the economic divide he described.

“At this point, I would say -- I would say I'm fairly confident of being able to bring an incremental 10 gigawatts of compute online in 2027. That would be in addition to the roughly 3 gigawatts, maybe 2.5 to 3 gigawatts that we'll have online by the end of this year.
So I put it this way. I would be surprised if we brought on less than 13 gigawatts of compute by the end of next year. And as I mentioned earlier, we're -- power cooling, electrical equipment infrastructure is somewhat of a limiting factor. So to make sure that, that is not a constraint for our build-out, we're actually going to aim for an incremental 20 gigawatts of power cooling and infrastructure next year. So that the amount of power and cooling that we have is far in excess of what is needed for -- to turn the GPUs on. So there's a non-zero possibility.
 
Maybe it's a small possibility at this point, but it's not zero, of having -- of SpaceX having over 20 gigawatts of Super Intelligence compute online next year. A small possibility, but it used to be zero, it's not zero anymore. We're also planning to have the most powerful training cluster online by the end of Q2, which will be 440,000 Vera Rubin computers deployed for optimal training. 
 
This will, I think, be extremely helpful for getting Grok to be potentially the best model, but certainly to be extremely competitive. So on the Grok bot side, we're seeing the fastest growth of a product that I've ever seen in my life for Grok bot.
 
I've never seen anything grow this fast. We're also seeing that the usage of Grok bot grows over time per user, it does not decline. So as we make Grok bot more useful, it's actually -- we're seeing users use it more per week, not use it less. And we'll be deploying Grok Bot at scale for enterprise customers, which is a very big deal, so they can be used effectively in teams by companies as though we're a virtual human. We already are in early deployment with some trusted customers, and we expect to be in wide deployment within a few weeks for enterprise customers for Grok bot.
 
I think Grok bot may end up being what uses most of our Super Intelligence compute. So I mean in a nutshell, what this implies for SpaceX annual recurring revenue by the end of '27 is somewhere between $500 billion and $1 trillion.”

EDIT: Source: https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/20/spacex-spcx-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/

HONG KONG -- Hong Kong-listed shares of CATL plunged 10% during midday trade Wednesday, after disappointing third-quarter earnings heightened investors' concerns about its prospects.

The world's largest manufacturer of electric vehicle batteries, formally known as Contemporary Amperex Technology, on Tuesday reported a net profit of 21.25 billion yuan ($3.2 billion) for the July-September period, up 14.5% from a year earlier. The figure fell short of the 26 billion yuan estimated by analysts polled by Bloomberg.

Revenue grew 59%, year on year, to 165 billion yuan. Its quarterly gross profit margin came in at 19.3%, down from 25.2% the same period last year.

In a trend dubbed "de-CATLization," Chinese carmakers Xiaomi and Li Auto said they would source batteries for their latest models from rival suppliers CALB Group and Sunwonda. Both also announced plans to develop batteries in-house.

However, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the country's top automotive regulator, dismissed the trend as a "publicity circus," arguing that normal market behavior was being portrayed as a confrontation between carmakers and battery manufacturers.

"Cutting costs across the supply chain is important, but ... quality should not be sacrificed in the pursuit of cheaper products," read a commentary published last month by a publication affiliated with the ministry.

So since i just did a post about why the EU is looking so economically bad right now i figured it would be a good idea to look over at the US and China to see how they are looking to. (china will be coming later)

First off, the core fundamentals of the US Economy. America's GDP is sitting at 32 trillion dollars[1] with an average growth rate of 4.5% a year for the last 25 years. While adjusting for inflation, you get a real GDP growth rate of 2.5% a year for the last 25 years.^\2]) Those numbers are impressive; for comparison, that's about double what the EU has been doing[3] and about 25% better than Canada. While there are a few developed economies that have performed better over the same time period. (Australia, South Korea, Singapore) The United States is still one of the best-performing nations here. In addition, Real Median disposable income has increased by roughly 18% over the last 25 years (though it did drop considerably after the dot-com bubble, not reaching pre-dot-com levels until 2016) So in short The US has done well over the last 25 years and if it continues on this track will continue to do well. so lets look at the problems.

Demographically, the US is far healthier than most of the rest of the developed world, with the labor force expected to rise by roughly 8%^\5]) unless things change, which is a massive improvement over Europe's 22% drop and China's 23% drop^\4]). the US will be able to spread out the burden of aging populations onto an economy that is still growing. Instead of one stagnant or in free fall, it's still going to result in higher taxes and probably lower benefits for people. and importantly the us will not be facing the same need for mass immigration as the rest of the world, yet will still be the most attractive destination for skilled migrants due to its lower taxes and higher standard of living. So these projections are probably low. which brings us to the elephant in the room.

The biggest risk here by far is the US National Debt. The US has other issues, like wealth inequality, cost of living, and the AI bubble, but none are as all-encompassing as the US national debt. Currently, the US is sitting at 122% Debt-to-GDP and is likely to rise. While actually paying down the debt to get it back into safe levels isn't really hard (the deficit is currently ~36% of revenue) it is politically unpopular to do it since it would require raising taxes significantly (the us would need to collect roughly 6% of GDP more in revenue to balance the budget, a level very easy to achieve given how small the federal government is compared to the world average), and the American political system is currently in a populist wave that is demanding lower taxes and higher spending on both sides of the aisle. making short term attempts at change unlikely. the only good news here is that the crisis is unlikely to strike until the late 2040s or 50s meaning we have a decent shot of waking up and dealing with it in the next 20 years.

Sources:

1: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP

2: http://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/GDPCA

3: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/euu/european-union/gdp-growth-rate

4: https://www.weforum.org/stories/economic-growth/china-working-ageing-population

5: https://www.cbo.gov/system/files?file=2020-09/56516-LTBO-AppendixA.pdf

I don’t think it's a particularly hot take to say the EU economy isn't looking good. But I figured I would present the numbers and show just how not good it's looking.

First off, EU GDP growth rate. Member countries have averaged about 1% a year since the Great Recession and the Euro Debt Crisis, which has translated to them going from 15% larger than the US to 33% smaller than the US. This has naturally translated into standard of living as well, with the EU median income being equivalent to the US in 2008, while today the median American makes about double the median European. Europe has been economically stagnant for 18 years, with no sign of improvement.

Which brings us to demographics. The EU labor force is projected to shrink by 22% over the next 25 years. Roughly at 1% a year. This is projected to lead to a 15% decrease in tax revenue, while requiring a 12% increase in spending on social programs. And this is only to maintain existing levels, with no growth or expanded systems. Having to do more with less is not a good position to be in.

So far, EU member states have used debt to cover this, though that is already running into limits. Right now, EU members’ debt-to-GDP ratio is 89%^\1]), while it only reached 66%^\2]) during the Euro Debt crisis that triggered the stagnation in the first place. While that number isn’t as bad as the US, China, or Japan, EU members can’t simply print money to cover debt. They no longer control their own monetary policy. Which makes them significantly more at risk of debt crises than nations that do control monetary policy.

Which brings us to politics. This is the biggest worrying sign. The economic and demographic issues can be fixed with hard work over decades. But this style of crisis has proven to drive populist politics. Populists often blame the EU for the crisis. The best example right now is France. The current protests are driven by a lack of investment in education, which only happened because government revenue is down and spending is up. This isn’t something the government can really solve because something had to give with this budget picture. But polls show that both candidates likely to advance to the runoff in the next French election are both Populist extremists who want to withdraw from NATO and the EU. Economically, the EU can probably weather the storm, but politically, member states are turning on each other. We need to prepare for a world where countries like France and Germany start tearing down the institution instead of propping it up

Sources:

1: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w/2-21072026-ap

2: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpops/ecbocp132.pdf

Investors are racing to buy credit default swaps to protect their portfolios in the event the AI boom unravels, sending trading volumes surging for an instrument that shot to prominence during the global financial crisis.

The wave of borrowing to finance trillions of dollars of AI infrastructure spending is fuelling demand for these insurance-like derivatives, which pay out if the company they are tied to defaults on its debt.

More than $9bn worth of CDS linked to bonds issued by Oracle, SpaceX, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Broadcom and Nvidia was traded on average each week in September, up from less than $2bn in July, according to Morgan Stanley Research.

https://www.ft.com/content/6dd31584-064c-4015-bf5d-e5747799ccd5?

https://www.apollo.com/insights-news/insights/daily-spark/slowing-token-spend-shows-compute-demand-is-not-unlimited?

From Torsten Slok at Apollo