🇩🇰 Denmark will skip the Davos forum amid escalating tensions over Greenland

“We can confirm that the Danish government will not be represented in Davos this week,” forum officials said. WEF representatives noted that each invited country decides for itself whether to participate in the event.

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China has been snapping up Russian oil at record discounts after India scaled back purchases

China sharply increased imports of Russia’s Urals crude that Indian refineries began avoiding due to sanctions, Reuters reports.

According to the agency, Russia’s seaborne oil exports to China exceeded 1.5 million barrels per day in December, about 300,000 bpd above the January–November average.

Shipments of Urals crude previously bought by India tripled to 259,000 bpd in the fourth quarter.

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🤖 🇺🇸 Despite billions pouring into AI infrastructure, the productivity gains aren't showing up in the macro data. A Forrester analyst says we're simply "not seeing" an AI-driven boost in any of the available statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers tell the story: productivity grew 2.7% annually from 1947-1973 before PCs, dropped to 2.1% from 1990-2001 after PCs went mainstream, and fell further to 1.5% from 2007-2019.
This is the Solow Paradox playing out again. Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow predicted in 1987 that "the effects of the PC revolution can be seen everywhere, except in the productivity statistics." Same pattern with AI.

My Take
Here's what matters: even when productivity gains do show up, they stopped flowing to workers decades ago. Since the late 1970s, productivity growth has diverged from worker compensation. The gains go to capital owners and high-skill labor. That gap existed before AI and AI is accelerating it.

JPMorgan says AI doubled productivity gains in certain operations from 3% to 6%. Other banks say AI lets them accomplish more with the same headcount. Notice the framing. Same headcount. Not higher wages, not more hiring. Companies are using AI to do more with fewer workers, not to share the gains. The corporate profits to wages ratio keeps climbing. Workers got their smallest share of GDP since 1947 last quarter. AI productivity might eventually transform the economy. But if history is any guide, the transformation means more output, same workers, and the difference goes to shareholders.

📎 Hedgie

🇺🇸 🇬🇧 ✡️ US reportedly considers granting asylum to Jewish people from UK

Discussions are reportedly under way within Donald Trump’s administration about the US possibly granting asylum to Jewish people from the UK, according to the Telegraph, citing the US president’s personal lawyer.

Trump lawyer Robert Garson told the newspaper that he has held conversations with the US state department about offering refuge to British Jews who are leaving the UK citing rising antisemitism.

Garson, 49, said he felt the UK was “no longer a safe place for Jews”. He added that recent events – namely an Islamist attack on a synagogue in Manchester and what he described as widespread antisemitism following the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 – had led him to believe that British Jews should be given the option of sanctuary in the US.

In the new interview with the Telegraph, Garson said he could see “no future” for Jews in the UK and placed much of the responsibility on to British prime minister Keir Starmer, accusing him of allowing antisemitism to grow.

Garson, a former British barrister who practiced in London before relocating to the US in 2008, told the Telegraph: “The UK is no longer a safe place for Jews. I have spoken to the state department as to whether the president should be offering British Jews asylum in the US.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/18/trump-uk-jewish-asylum

📢 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 Nigel Farage: "To use economic threats against a country that’s been considered to be your closest ally for over a hundred years is not the kind of thing we would expect. It’s wrong. It’s bad. It would be very, very hurtful to us."

"I am all for Trump taking out enemies of the West, Maduro, the Iranian regime... But if he falls out with his own allies and leaves America isolated, that would be a very bad place to be."

📎 Dzis Maksym