PODCAST: Why This Recession is Different

Russia Vows To 'Fill China's Energy Resource Gap' Amid Hormuz Crisis In Lavrov-Xi Meeting At a moment it remains a serious open question over just how vulnerable China is to the Hormuz Strait crisis, and now with the US-imposed US naval blockade of the vital oil transit waterway, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is in Beijing pledging energy support to China.  Lavrov met with President Xi Jinping on Wednesday, during which Xi urged China and Russia to "give full play to the advantages of geographic proximity and complementarity, deepen all-round cooperation and raise...

Singularity Update: You Have No Idea How Crazy Humanoid Robots Have Gotten Authored by Peter H. Diamandis via Metatrends, I just spent the afternoon at Figure headquarters in San Jose with Brett Adcock and David Blundin, and I’m still processing what I saw. We’re not talking about concept robots. We’re talking about fully autonomous humanoid robots running neural networks end-to-end, doing kitchen work, unloading dishwashers, organizing packages – for hours at a time, with no human intervention. Today? Figure’s robots are doing 67 consecutive hours of autonomous work. One error in 67 hours....

US Pending Home Sales Rebound Off Record Lows, Despite Rising Mortgage Rates After rising in February, US Pending Home Sales were expected to continue to improve in March (+0.5% MoM) but - despite apparently rising mortgage rates - sales rose 1.5% MoM (even with February revised up to +2.5% MoM). This dragged pending home sales up to +1.8% YoY (to the highest level since Nov 2024)... Source: Bloomberg ...extending its bounce off record lows... Source: Bloomberg “Contract signings rose in March despite higher mortgage rates, pointing to pent-up housing demand,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence...