UBS Checks With Major Restaurant Franchisees Reveal Troubling Consumer Trends

NATO Mulls Nixing Annual Summits, Wary Of 'Trump Drama' Overshadowing Fresh reporting in Reuters says that NATO leadership is mulling ending its practice of holding annual summits as the Trump presidency has "cast a long shadow" over such meetings and as member states are looking for "less drama". For example, at the 2018 summit Trump threatened to walk ⁠out after bitterly complaining over allies' low defense spending. Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general at the time, wrote in a recently published memoir, "Had he made good on his threat to leave ​in protest,...

Death Of Europe's Industrial Base: VW CEO Set To Announce 50,000 Job Cuts Europe's industrial demise has become impossible to ignore. The continent's automotive manufacturing base is being hollowed out by high energy costs, regulatory pressure, and a flood of cheap Chinese electric vehicles, with Germany, once Europe's industrial powerhouse, emerging as the epicenter of this terrible decline. Germany's largest manufacturer by revenue is Volkswagen Group, whose CEO, Oliver Blume, is warning employees that the coming weeks will be critical as Europe's largest automaker prepares to detail the most extensive restructuring...

Russia Launches Springtime Offensive On Ukraine, As "That Other War" Drags On Just days after we reported that trilateral peace negotiations between Russia, Ukraine, and the Trump administration had been suspended -  likely indefinitely - thanks to Washington's escalating involvement in the Iran war, Reuters is now confirming the inevitable: Moscow is pressing ahead with a fresh springtime offensive while Kiev scrambles to hold the line. As we reported before, from the collapse of talks in Geneva and Miami to Putin's envoy shuttling back for what turned out to be fruitless...