🏦 🇩🇪 📉 Deutsche Bundesbank reports the highest loss in the central bank's history.

🔶️ Germany's central bank plunged to a record €19.2bn (£15.9bn) loss last year in the latest setback for Europe's largest economy. A bond-buying spree prompted the Bundesbank to report its largest net loss in history, with officials warning that financial strain would remain throughout 2025.

🔶️ The losses stem from the central bank holding too many government bonds with low yields, which were unable to offset a recent rise in borrowing costs that led to the Bundesbank paying out more in interest to banks.

🔶️ Adrian Prettejohn, an economist at Capital Economics, said: “It was buying bonds with yields that were very low or negative, and now it is paying interest rates at 2.5pc, or last year it was 4pc.”

🔶️ However, it comes at a time of increasing gloom around the German economy, which is grappling with a slump in manufacturing, an ageing population and Donald Trump’s global trade war.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/25/german-central-bank-plunges-to-record-19bn-loss

https://archive.ph/7hSdw

🔗 Disclose TV

🔍 🇺🇸 🕵‍♂️ CNN reports that, on CIA’s leadership floor, there are talks that mass firings & proposed buyouts may result in a group of ex-CIA officers who could run to foreign intel services.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/24/politics/cia-security-risks-trump/index.html

🔗 Jerry Dunleavy IV

⚠️ Confirmed: A nation-scale power outage has knocked out internet connectivity across much of #Chile; network data show national connectivity at 25% of ordinary levels, with services including public transport affected by an energy transmission failure in Norte Chico #CorteDeLuz

🕵‍♂️ 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 Peter Navarro, one of the US president’s closest advisers, is pushing for the US to remove Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network — which also includes the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

🔗 Financial Times

☢️ 🇺🇸 🏫 Texas Wants To Be King Of Nuclear Power As Next AI Trade Unfolds

🔶️ Amid a flurry of nuclear startups around the country, Abilene-based Natura Resources is one of just two companies with permits from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct a so-called "advanced" reactor. It will build its small, one megawatt molten salt reactor beneath a newly-completed laboratory at Abilene Christian University, in an underground trench 25 feet deep and 80 feet long, covered by a concrete lid and serviced by a 40-ton construction crane.

🔶️ The other company, California-based Kairos Power, is building its 35 megawatt test reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the 80-year capital of American nuclear power science. Both target completion in 2027 and hope to usher in a new chapter of the energy age.

🔶️ The U.S. Department of Energy has been working for years to resuscitate the American nuclear sector, advancing the development of new reactors to meet the enormous incoming electrical demands of big new industrial facilities, from data centers and Bitcoin mines to chemical plants and desalination facilities.

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/texas-wants-be-king-nuclear-power-next-ai-trade-unfolds

💵 🇺🇸 🌎 What a ‘Mar-a-Lago Accord’ Would Mean for the Dollar - Bloomberg

🔶️ President Donald Trump’s aggressive plans to shake up how the US trades with the rest of the world have fueled speculation about the potential for a grand multinational bargain that would deliberately weaken the dollar — helping American exporters compete with rivals such as China and Japan. Analysts have already settled on a name, the “Mar-a-Lago Accord,” after Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida.

🔶️ The trouble is, the dollar’s exchange rate has been historically strong, undermining US competitiveness by making imports relatively cheaper. Indeed, some analysts view the dollar today as overvalued based on economic models that look at things such as the domestic purchasing power of a currency. This overvaluation, and its effects, means Washington has an incentive to reach some kind of deal with other nations that would address the currency strength.

https://archive.ph/4dmDZ

🔗 Anthony Pompliano

More gold is being shipped quietly between countries right now than at any time in history. Why? Because we’re getting a new global financial system. Luke Gromen explains.

(0:00) Gold Is Still Critical to Our Economy
(8:17) The Government’s Secrecy Around Gold Ownership
(13:17) Why Can’t Fort Knox Be Audited?
(20:47) The Intel Community’s Propaganda Around Gold Owners
(24:41) Is Warren Buffet a Political Pawn for the Banks?
(30:17) The Biggest Global Players in the Gold Industry
(32:26) The Secret Initiative to Slow Energy Production
(41:19) Could Trump Use Gold to Fight National Debt?
(50:47) America’s Dependence on China and How Trump Is Fixing It
(1:02:21) The Parasite Bleeding the Life Out of Our Economy
(1:11:29) Trump and Vance’s Big Picture Plan for the US Economy
(1:22:15) Should You Invest in Gold?

👉 Tucker Carlson UNCENSORED

🇪🇺 🇷🇺 🇺🇸 ‘Europe would need to form 50 new brigades, calculates Bruegel, a Brussels-based think-tank, many of them “heavy” units with armour, to replace the 300,000 American troops that it estimates would be deployed to the continent in a war.‘

🔶️ In truth, it could take a decade before Europe is able to defend itself without America’s help. To understand Europe’s challenge, start with the debate over Ukraine. European countries are currently discussing the prospect of a military deployment in Ukraine to enforce any future peace deal. The talks, which are being led by France and Britain, envisage sending a relatively modest force, of perhaps low tens of thousands of troops. They would not be deployed in the east at the front line, but to Ukrainian cities, ports, nuclear power plants and other critical national infrastructure, according to a Western official.

🔶️ The fact that Europe would struggle to generate an independent division-sized force for Ukraine demonstrates the scale of the task involved in Mr Merz’s vision. Meeting NATO’s existing war plans—with America present—would require Europe to spend 3% of GDP on defence, far above existing levels for most countries. Britain took a step in that direction on February 25th, announcing a plan to spend 2.5% of GDP by 2027, but even that may not be enough. Mark Rutte, the secretary-general of NATO, is said to be touting a target of 3.7%. But making good American shortfalls would require a figure well above 4%, probably much higher.

https://www.economist.com/international/2025/02/25/can-europe-confront-vladimir-putins-russia-on-its-own

https://archive.ph/3J7Yw