Tsar Vladimir has proposed that Donald Copperfield and Mandarin Xi join him on the sidelines of APEC in Shenzhen, 18-19 November, to settle the Ukraine war. Absent from the guest list: Ukraine, and Europe. The Kremlin reportedly floated it on the 9 October call — seven days before the Graham Act sanctions were waived, one week after the diesel arrangement, and apparently while Washington was advising Kyiv to find a new president. Peskov says there is “no clear understanding yet” of the agenda, which is diplomatic for we have one. Beijing will not object if The Manipulator In Chief agrees, while privately worrying that a side-show might overshadow APEC and drag China into a European war it has profited from handsomely. A senior US official says the President “could be receptive.”

https://investinglive.com/commodities/putin-floats-trump-xi-summit-on-ukraine-at-apec-leaving-kyiv-out-of-the-room/

Three men discussing the fate of a fourth country in a Chinese city, with the continent that funded the war reading about it in the Wall Street Journal. Yalta had the decency to invite Churchill.

Nine days before Israel votes, the American President endorsed a candidate — the first time one has done so explicitly, Axios reports. ‘Satanyahu’ is “a Great Warrior Prime Minister” and a “great partner” against Iran; and should Israelis choose otherwise, Washington will have to handle Iran alone, which The Warmonger In Chief is “not inclined to do.” Read that as the voter is meant to: elect him or forfeit the superpower. ‘Satanyahu’, for his part, warns that Israel might face a “hostile” US president in two years — making the ballot a referendum on one foreign politician’s affections. His coalition polls short of 61 seats, which explains the intervention. Consider the week’s full inventory: Washington has advised Ukraine to replace its president, proposed settling that war with Russia and China while excluding Kyiv and Europe, and now instructs Israelis how to vote.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/117462449149582042

Three democracies, three verdicts, one author. Here is the consistency — in each case the preferred leader is the one who signs.

US Builder sentiment fell to 29 in October from 32, a fourteen-year low, with every component sinking: current sales 33, future expectations 32, and prospective buyer traffic 18 — the weakest since April 2012, Covid excepted. Forty-three per cent of builders cut prices, the highest share of the period, by an average 6% for the seventh consecutive month, while 65% dangled incentives for the nineteenth straight month. Mortgages sit at 7.5% against an existing average of 4.33%, which locks the seller in and the buyer out simultaneously. The cost side is the stagflation thesis in miniature: construction loans dearer, materials dearer, diesel and energy dearer. And a detail worth noting — more than a third of builders reported immigration enforcement in their markets in the past month, delaying projects and keeping even legal workers at home.

So, Washington has raised the cost of borrowing, the cost of fuel and the cost of labour, then wonders why nobody builds. Some call it supply-side constraints and affordability. we call it policy, working exactly as designed.

The Ministry of National Unity has a reassuring result to report: oil-rich Alberta voted 76% to remain in Canada, rejecting even the modest proposal of a future binding referendum — and Prime Minister’ Marx Carney’ immediately declared that “Albertans chose unity,” the phrase every government reaches for when three-quarters of a province’s richest region declines, this time, to leave. The subtext goes unmentioned: a quarter of Albertans voted to begin the legal machinery of secession — Canada’s first separation plebiscite since Quebec in 1995 — against a backdrop of a collapsing relationship with Washington, where US Treasury Secretary Bessent openly courted the idea that America would make a “better partner” for Alberta than Ottawa.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/livestory/alberta-referendum-results-live-updates-separatism-october-19-2026-9.7387777

So, the Empire, having annexed Greenland by Truth Social post and renamed the Strait of Hormuz after itself, is now quietly cheering on the dismemberment of its northern neighbour’s wealthiest province. “Unity” won, but 24% of the richest province on the continent just told Ottawa it would rather try its luck elsewhere.

Welcome to the new Paris’ City Tour…

🎃 The Macro Butler’s Halloween Special

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America’s housing market has stopped building. In September, housing starts fell 5.2% and August was revised to a 5.9% plunge, which leaves the annualised pace back near its post-COVID lows. Permits fell 0.2% and sit near the bottom of their four-year range, and single-family starts hit a one-year low.

Signed contracts on American homes have fallen to a record low. Pending home sales dropped 7.3% in September, nearly double the 3.9% decline expected, and erased August’s 0.3% bounce. Every region fell. The West led the retreat with a 9.2% monthly drop and a 15% fall on the year, followed by the South, Midwest and Northeast. Even the Northeast, where bidding wars pushed median prices up 5% to $523,600, could not escape the gravity. Buyers wait for lower rates, sellers wait for higher prices, and the market waits for a miracle. The American Dream has not been foreclosed, only frozen in escrow. A home you cannot sell is not an asset; it is a cell with a mortgage attached.

The arithmetic of the trap is simple. New mortgages cost 7.5%, while the average homeowner pays just 4.33%. Owners won’t sell and give up cheap money, buyers can’t afford expensive money, and builders already sitting on swollen new-home inventories won’t throw good money after bad. Nobody moves, nobody builds, and the American Dream now has a waiting list but no address. Washington runs trillion-dollar deficits to stimulate an economy whose foundations it has stopped pouring. In a nation of locked-in mortgages, the house is no longer a home; it is a hostage. The American Dream has not been foreclosed, only frozen in escrow. A home you cannot sell is not an asset; it is a cell with a mortgage attached.

“The current hard-asset consolidation is an opportunity of a lifetime ahead of a global currency reset.” 🥇🥈🔥

The Macro Butler sits down with Metals and Miners (Gary Bohm) to make the call the consensus is too nervous to make: the pullback in gold, silver, and the miners isn’t a top — it’s a generational entry point. While the crowd frets over every red candle, The Macro Butler lays out why this consolidation is exactly what precedes the next leg of the hard-asset bull market.

Here’s the thesis:

🥇 Gold’s correction is nearly done — a weekly close above $4,000 confirms the bottom, and the structural drivers haven’t gone anywhere.
🥈 Silver and the miners are the asymmetric play — the higher-beta exposure the consensus keeps underpricing just as the setup gets most attractive.
🏛 The macro backdrop is rocket fuel — $40 trillion in US debt, a global currency reset starting in Europe and Japan, and a war cycle with no off-ramp.
💰 Why hard assets win — when paper promises break, currencies are reset, capital migrates to what can’t be printed, frozen, or defaulted on.

Consolidations shake out the weak hands. They don’t end bull markets — they fuel them.

🎧 Watch the full Metals and Miners interview now.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-metals-and-miners-58c

Uncle Sam held another 20-year bond auction, and the guests once again stayed home. The bond cleared at 5.469%, the highest yield ever for the tenor and 49 basis points above September. It tailed the when-issued by 0.9 basis points, the fourth straight tail.

Bid-to-cover improved to 2.73, but foreign demand did not. Indirect bidders took 58.2%, well below their 65.2% average, while domestic directs absorbed a record 31.6% and dealers mopped up 10.3%.

Treasury Secretary Bessent is now expected to scrap the 20-year at the next refunding announcement, ending the unloved maturity that has sat as an awkward hump on the curve since its 2020 revival.
That is how Washington solves a demand problem: when no one wants the product, discontinue it and sell more T-bills. When foreigners stop buying America’s debt, Americans are left lending to themselves at record rates.
An empire that must cancel its own bonds for lack of buyers is not managing debt; it is rationing it. The bond market has not rejected Washington yet; it has simply started charging for the lecture.

At the Berlin Global Dialogue, Keizer Merz named the threat he fears most. It isn’t recession, the EU, Washington or Beijing, but “Russia’s influence on our society.” In Merz’s Germany, a stagnating economy, deindustrialising factories, unaffordable energy and a fraying Mittelstand all rank below the danger of citizens forming the wrong opinions. AfD co-chair Alice Weidel replied that the chancellor’s disregard for Germany’s real problems is itself the gravest threat to the nation.

https://tass.com/world/2205765

When a government cannot fix the economy, it starts policing the mood. Blaming Moscow is cheaper than cutting energy bills, and calling dissent foreign interference is easier than answering it. Every failing regime eventually discovers the enemy within; it is usually the voter. Germans were promised Wirtschaftswunder; they got Gedankenpolizei.