In the capital of Eurostan, Ursula The Witch and Super Mario have convened to discuss European competitiveness — which is Brussels-speak for announcing that the solution to problems created by too much centralised government is considerably more centralised government, this time rebranded as "One Europe, One Single Market" because calling it what it is would alarm the taxpayers financing it. Super Mario's report correctly diagnosed Europe's illnesses — stagnant productivity, unaffordable energy, fragmented capital markets, collapsing industrial competitiveness — while heroically declining to mention that Brussels created most of them through Net Zero mandates, carbon taxes, the Digital Services Act, ESG directives, and enough compliance requirements to bury a continent.

https://eualive.net/von-der-leyen-tells-draghi-the-eu-is-serious-but-only-15-7-of-his-report-has-been-implemented/

The proposed cure is €750-800 billion in additional annual investment through 2030 — approximately €4.8 trillion over six years — to be guided, subsidised, and de-risked by the same institutions that made private capital unwilling to invest in the first place, meaning taxpayers absorb the losses while politically connected corporations collect the profits. Of Super Mario's 380 recommendations, a 2025 European Parliament study found only 11% had been adopted — yet Brussels celebrates "excellent progress" and demands more authority to implement the remaining 89% that nobody followed.

Ursula The Witch and Super Mario are not rescuing European competitiveness — they are undertakers debating how to finance the funeral of the economy their own policies killed.

The Ministry of American Sovereignty has announced a minor procurement update: buried inside the $1.15 trillion FY2027 National Defence Authorization Act, Section 219 directs the Pentagon to create a permanent "executive agent" — an official whose statutory mandate is to expand and accelerate the integration of US and Israeli military technology, supply chains, co-production lines, and classified programs across missile defence, AI, counter-drone, directed energy, quantum, and biotechnology — a provision so significant that House leadership ensured it received no independent debate, no separate vote, and no amendment, after the Rules Committee twice refused to allow the bipartisan Massie-Khanna strike amendment to reach the floor. No other US ally has anything remotely like this — not Britain, not Japan, not Australia, not NATO.

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/2080031761975685614

The constitutional footnote writes itself: Satanyahu has publicly described the integration plan as his own idea, which is the geopolitical equivalent of a foreign head of government announcing which section of your defence bill he prefers — and being accommodated by simple majority inside a must-pass bill under a rule forbidding amendment.

In a policy announcement that will delight domestic pharmaceutical lobbyists and alarm every American who has ever checked the price of their blood pressure medication, ‘Tariff-Man’ has announced a 100% tariff on imported generic drugs starting August 2028, rising to 200% a year later — which is the market economy's elegant way of doubling the cost of medicines that 90% of Americans depend on in order to incentivise building factories that will take a decade to construct, produce drugs at multiples of current Indian costs, and achieve full operation approximately two administrations after the man proposing them has left office. India supplies nearly 40% of US generic drug volume — covering hypertension, diabetes, cancer, and infectious diseases — at a 30-50% manufacturing cost advantage that no Truth Social announcement can legislate away, meaning the tariff will either raise drug prices immediately, fail to reshore production, or achieve both simultaneously.

The American patient — already financing groceries on credit cards at 21% interest — has been placed on a two-year countdown to paying considerably more for the medications keeping them alive.

The Macro Butler returned on Asharq Bloomberg TV to deliver the energy call that every investor, consumer, and central banker needs to hear right now: 🛢🔥

⛽️ Diesel Crack Spreads in Europe just hit all-time highs. Jet Fuel Kerosene is trading at $150 per barrel in Singapore. These are not lagging indicators — they are the leading edge of a supply shock that is already in motion and has nowhere to go but higher.

🌊 From Hormuz to Bab al-Mandeb to the Black Sea, the entire oil supply chain is simultaneously disrupted. This is not a regional story — it is a global energy infrastructure crisis dressed up as a series of unrelated geopolitical events.

📈 $90 oil on the long end of the curve is not a ceiling — it’s the floor needed to trigger Drill Baby Drill in the US. Until we get there, expect more fuel surcharges, higher inflation, and ultimately the shortages that nobody in the consensus is forecasting because nobody in the consensus reads the crack spread data.

It is not if oil moves sharply higher. It is when.

📺 Watch the full interview on Asharq Bloomberg TV — before your next fuel surcharge arrives in the inbox.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-asharq-bloomberg-tv-7f6

In a plot twist that required the World Cup to end before anyone noticed, Spain won $50 million in FIFA prize money on American soil only to discover that the IRS — the same institution that struggles to audit the Department of War — has found the bandwidth to potentially withhold 30% of a foreign football team's winnings under its non-resident alien income tax rules, because nothing says "welcome to America" quite like demanding $15 million from the champions before they board the plane home. Bipartisan congressional outrage has duly erupted, with Republicans calling it "a ripoff" and Democrats calling it "wrong" — a rare moment of cross-aisle unity achieved not by healthcare, infrastructure, or the $40 trillion national debt, but by the prospect of Spain's footballers getting a smaller cheque.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/irs-hot-seat-over-potential-cash-grab-spains-world-cup-winnings-ripoff

When the IRS moves faster on Spain's football winnings than on the bribes at the Pentagon, American fiscal priorities have finally revealed their true hierarchy.

The ECB held rates at 2.25% on Thursday — pausing with the solemn gravitas of an institution that just discovered, after raising rates in the middle of a war-driven energy shock in both 2008 and 2011 and immediately reversing both decisions in tears, that perhaps it should wait for one more data point before making the same mistake a third time. Christine Lagarde, presiding over a continent importing record Russian LNG while sanctioning Russia, running its largest defence budgets since the Cold War while running fiscal deficits above its own rules, and now facing the admission that "the full inflationary impact of the energy shock has yet to play out," delivered the ECB's customary masterpiece of non-commitment — closely monitoring, data-dependent, one meeting at a time — while the euro quietly extended its weakness against the dollar, Bund yields stayed elevated, and markets priced in 48 more basis points of hikes by year-end.

The ECB didn't pause because the inflation shock is under control — it paused because the worst of it hasn't arrived yet, and it wanted to update its spreadsheets first.