Half-Way Into Fiscal 2026, US Budget Deficit Is 11% Lower Than 2025, But It's About To Get Much Worse

Germany's Debt Spiral: Bundesbank Chief Breaks Silence Submitted by Thomas Kolbe It’s not every day that top officials of the German Bundesbank take an explicit stance on daily politics. Nagel’s stark warnings about Germany’s debt and the government’s creative accounting were surely met with grim recognition in Berlin’s corridors of power. Open criticism is rare there, and when it comes from credible insiders, it stings even more. Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel  Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil apparently still believe the fairy tale that debt-fueled demand policy can create economic miracles,...

Services Sector Contraction In March Screams Q1 Stagflation Following S&P Global's Manufacturing PMI's better than expected print higher (signaling resilience in the face of March's war in Iran), the data released this morning showed the US Services Sector experienced a contraction of activity at the end of the first quarter of 2026. The headline S&P Global US Services PMI Business Activity Index recorded 49.8 in March, down from February’s 51.7 and lower than the earlier ‘flash’ estimate of 51.1. It was the first decline recorded in over three years amid the weakest...

Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) said on Tuesday that US airstrikes in Anbar, western Iraq, killed 15 of its fighters, including a senior commander. Iraqi media reported that Iraqi Prime Minister “In a blatant and cowardly attack, the commander of the Anbar Operations in the Popular Mobilization Forces, Saad Dua al-Bayji, was martyred along with a group […]