This week, I speak with A. Lange & Söhne CEO Wilhelm Schmid at the Audrain Newport Concours & Motor Week for a special edition of Masters in Business. Barry and Wilhelm compare watch and car design. They also discuss A. Lange & Söhne’s philosophy on watchmaking. In addition, they cover innovations in watch mechanics and watch collecting.

A. Lange & Sohne makes watches by hand, and Wilhelm discusses the production process. We also discuss the release of the new Saxonia Thin Onyx.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

 

 

 

The post MiB: A. Lange & Söhne CEO Wilhelm Schmid appeared first on The Big Picture.

From J.D. Power: November New-Vehicle Retail Sales Decline 4.8% as Effects of EV Pull-Ahead Persist Brief excerpt:

Total new-vehicle sales for November 2025, including retail and non-retail transactions, are projected to reach 1,255,900, a 5.2% decrease year over year, according to a joint forecast from J.D. Power and GlobalData. November 2025 has 25 selling days, one fewer than November 2024.

The seasonally adjusted annualized rate (SAAR) for total new-vehicle sales is expected to be 15.4 million units, down 1.2 million units from November 2024.
...
Thomas King, president of the data and analytics division at J.D. Power:

"November’s results reflect another notable—yet anticipated—decline in the new-vehicle sales pace, driven largely by the pull-ahead of electric vehicle (EV) purchases prior to the expiration of federal EV tax credits on Sept. 30. That expiration prompted many shoppers to accelerate buying decisions, resulting in a surge in EV sales that temporarily inflated the overall industry sales pace. Now, two months after the credit expired, the industry continues to feel the effect of those accelerated purchases. In November, EVs are expected to account for just 6.0% of new-vehicle retail sales, consistent with October but well below the 12.9% recorded in September.
emphasis added

From Haig Stoddard at Omdia (pay site): US Light Vehicle Sales Declining Again in November; Falling Inventory Lowers Chance for a December Rebound

Tighter inventory, tanking deliveries of battery-electric vehicles, and an overall rise in prices for what is available are capping demand, with expectations the October-November slowdown continues in December.

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows actual sales from the BEA (Blue), and J.D. Power's forecast for November(Red).

On a seasonally adjusted annual rate basis, the J.D. Power forecast of 154 million SAAR would be up slightly from last month, and down 7.6% from a year ago.
All of Q4 will likely be difficult for vehicle sales.

The advance release of Q3 GDP has been cancelled, and the 2nd release has not been scheduled.

From BofA:

On net, given the higher weighting of the months of Jul and Aug in quarterly consumer spending as compared to Sep, our 3Q PCE tracking is down a tenth to 3.1% q/q saar. This along with higher-than-expected Aug business inventories left our 3Q GDP tracking at 2.8% q/q saar. [November 26th estimate]
emphasis added

From Goldman:

We boosted our Q3 GDP tracking estimate by 0.1pp to +3.8% (quarter-over-quarter annualized). Our Q3 domestic final sales estimate stands at +2.7%. [November 19th estimate]

And from the Atlanta Fed: GDPNow

The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the third quarter of 2025 is 3.9 percent on November 26, down from 4.0 percent on November 25. After this morning’s advance durable manufacturing report from the US Census Bureau, the nowcast of third-quarter real gross private domestic investment growth decreased from 4.4 percent to 3.5 percent. [November 26th estimate]

Trump Says South Africa Won't Be Invited To 2026 Miami G20 Summit

U.S. President Donald Trump said South Africa won’t be invited to the 2026 G20 summit in Florida, after the United States boycotted this year’s gathering in Johannesburg.

“At the conclusion of the G20, South Africa refused to hand off the G20 Presidency to a Senior Representative from our U.S. Embassy, who attended the Closing Ceremony,” Trump said in a Nov. 26 post on Truth Social.

“Therefore, at my direction, South Africa will NOT be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G20, which will be hosted in the Great City of Miami, Florida next year.”

In the post, Trump also accused the South African government of “killing white people” and “randomly allowing their farms to be taken from them,” which he said was the reason Washington boycotted this year’s summit.

“South Africa has demonstrated to the World they are not a country worthy of Membership anywhere, and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately,” he added.

As Guy Birchall details below for The Epoch Times, the presidency of the G20 rotates.

South Africa assumed it in December 2024 and will hold it through November, after which the United States will assume the role.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office described Trump’s missive as a “regrettable statement,” and said that not inviting his country to next year’s summit was a punitive measure. The office said the U.S. president was spreading “misinformation and distortions” about South Africa.

“As the United States was not present at the summit, instruments of the G20 Presidency were duly handover [sic] to a US Embassy official at the Headquarters of South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation,” Ramaphosa’s office said in the statement.

The office said South Africa “is a member of the G20 in its own name and right” and that its membership of the group “is at the behest of all other members.”

“South Africa is a sovereign constitutional democratic country and does not appreciate insults from another country about its worth in participating in global platforms,” his office added, saying that it will “never insult another country.”

During the G20 meeting in Johannesburg, leaders adopted a declaration on Nov. 22 to address climate concerns and other global issues despite U.S. objections.

The declaration, drafted without input from the United States, “can’t be renegotiated,” Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, told reporters at the time.

(Front row, L–R) Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Angolan President and Chairperson of the African Union João Lourenço, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pose for a group photo on the opening day of the Group of 20 leaders' summit, in Johannesburg on Nov. 22, 2025. Gianluigi Guercia/AP

The White House said in response that South Africa had “weaponized” its leadership of the group.

G20 declarations are usually made by unanimous consent. The United States had offered to send the U.S. chargé d'affaires for the handover. South Africa rejected that offer.

Magwenya said that the South African president “will not hand over to a junior embassy official the presidency of the G20.”

“It’s a breach of protocol that is not going to be accommodated,” Magwenya added.

Trump had announced that he would not be attending the G20 event this year on Nov. 7, repeating accusations of human rights abuses against white South Africans.

“It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social at the time. “Afrikaners (People who are descended from Dutch settlers, and also French and German immigrants) are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated. No U.S. Government Official will attend as long as these Human Rights abuses continue.”

South African officials at the time called the president’s remarks regrettable and denied allegations of persecution.

“The characterisation of Afrikaners as an exclusively white group is ahistorical,” South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation said in a Nov. 8 statement. “Furthermore, the claim that this community faces persecution, is not substantiated by fact.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the State Dining Room at the White House on Oct. 8, 2025. Evan Vucci/AP Photo

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also boycotted a meeting of G20 foreign ministers held in South Africa in February.

Since taking office, Trump has criticized South Africa’s domestic and foreign policies, including its land expropriation law and its accusations that Israel committed genocide in the Gaza Strip. Israel denies the accusations.

Since the end of apartheid, Pretoria has implemented what it calls affirmative action and Black Economic Empowerment policies, but the South African government has denied seizing land belonging to white citizens.

The next G20 summit will take place at the Trump National Doral Golf Club in Miami, Florida, in December 2026.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/28/2025 - 08:55

Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Fannie Mae Multi-Family Delinquency Rate Highest Since Housing Bust (ex-pandemic)

Excerpt:

Fannie and Freddie: Single Family Delinquency Rate Mostly Unchanged in October

Freddie Mac reported that the Single-Family serious delinquency rate in October was 0.56%, down from 0.57% September. Freddie's rate is up year-over-year from 0.55% in October 2024, however, this is below the pre-pandemic level of 0.60%.

Freddie's serious delinquency rate peaked in February 2010 at 4.20% following the housing bubble and peaked at 3.17% in August 2020 during the pandemic.

Fannie Mae reported that the Single-Family serious delinquency rate in October was 0.54%, unchanged from 0.54% in September. The serious delinquency rate is up year-over-year from 0.52% in October 2024, however, this is below the pre-pandemic lows of 0.65%.

The Fannie Mae serious delinquency rate peaked in February 2010 at 5.59% following the housing bubble and peaked at 3.32% in August 2020 during the pandemic.

There is much more in the article.

Nearly 200 Million Shoppers Expected To Hit Stores Thanksgiving Weekend

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

Retail experts predict that 187 million people will shop between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday, based on a consumer survey released on Nov. 20.

The survey by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights and Analytics showed this year’s prediction topping last year’s, when 183.4 million people were expected. Federation data from December 2024 show that 197 million actually turned out.

“The holidays are an important part of many consumers’ budgets, and that trend is especially true this season,” Katherine Cullen, the federation’s vice president of industry and consumer insights, said in a statement.

Gifts from the 1960s are making a comeback this season, as toy buyers are expected to focus on Lego, Barbie, Hot Wheels, and dolls. These vintage classics will be the top toys for consumers this year, according to the survey.

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is still the most popular day to shop; 70 percent of shoppers plan to seek out discounts that day.

The second biggest retail day is expected on Cyber Monday; 40 percent of consumers surveyed said they planned to buy online on Dec. 1.

Another big shopping day is expected on Nov. 29, when 67 million people are expected to shop local and support small businesses, according to the survey.

“Many Americans consider shopping to be an important part of their Thanksgiving holiday and one of the best ways to get deals on gifts,” Phil Rist, Prosper Insights and Analytics executive vice president of strategy, said in a statement.

More than half of those surveyed who are planning to take advantage of the sales say it was because the deals “are too good to pass up,” Rist said.

Shopping has started early for nearly 60 percent of consumers, according to the survey.

Shoppers are expecting to spend an average of $890 on gifts and other seasonal items. Families with kids plan to spend $33 more on average on gifts, the survey revealed.

The retail federation’s survey asked 8,000 adult consumers about their holiday shopping plans. It was conducted from Oct. 31 to Nov. 6 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.1 percentage points.

Long exposure photo with people shopping on Black Friday at a mall in Hanover, Md., on Nov. 29, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Another survey by the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) released on Nov. 17 predicts Americans will spend $127 billion on Thanksgiving weekend—an increase of $2 billion from last year.

“Younger generations are steadily growing in their spending power, and we expect to see that reflected during Thanksgiving Weekend,” ICSC President Tom McGee said. “Every year there’s a question about whether the long holiday weekend still matters. And every year, the answer from consumers is the same: It does.”

Nearly two-thirds of shoppers surveyed by ICSC said they plan to do all or most of their seasonal purchasing between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, including 76 percent of Gen Z shoppers and 71 percent of millennials.

Eighty percent of Thanksgiving weekend shoppers plan to visit a retail center during the holiday, according to the organization’s survey.

The ICSC survey was conducted online from Nov. 10 to Nov. 12 and is a demographically representative sample of 1,015 respondents, according to the organization.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/28/2025 - 08:30

CME Reopens After Chicago Data Center "Cooling Issue"

Update (0830ET): CME Globex Futures & Options markets have officially reopened after their overnight 'cooling issue'. For now, Nasdaq futs are rallying...

*  *  *

Update (0820ET): Headlines crossing over the Terminal show that CME Globex Futures & Options Markets will open at 08:30 ET after hours of being offline due to a "cooling issue" at data centers operated by CyrusOne in Chicago.

Here are the headlines:

• CME GLOBEX FUTURES & OPTIONS MARKETS TO OPEN 7:30 CENTRAL TIME

• CME: ALL GTCS THAT HAVE BEEN ACKNOWLEDGED WILL REMAIN WORKING

• CME GLOBEX FUTURES & OPTIONS MARKETS TO PRE-OPEN 07:00 CENTRAL

• CME Partially Restores Operations as Forex Platform Restarts

What a mess for this shortened post-Thanksgiving session to end the week.

* * *

A major "cooling issue" at data centers operated by CyrusOne forced the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to halt futures and options trading early Friday morning, disrupting activity across equities, FX, Treasuries, energy, and agricultural markets.  

"Due to a cooling issue at CyrusOne data centers, our markets are currently halted. Support is working to resolve the issue in the near term and will advise clients of Pre-Open details as soon as they are available," CME wrote on X late Thursday night. 

Due to a cooling issue at CyrusOne data centers, our markets are currently halted. Support is working to resolve the issue in the near term and will advise clients of Pre-Open details as soon as they are available.

— CME Group (@CMEGroup) November 28, 2025

CME provided an update around 0500 ET, indicating, "BrokerTec EU markets are open and trading. All other CME Group markets remain halted due to a data center cooling issue at CyrusOne. We will provide updates as they are available." 

BrokerTec EU markets are open and trading. All other CME Group markets remain halted due to a data center cooling issue at CyrusOne. We will provide updates as they are available.

— CME Group (@CMEGroup) November 28, 2025

The disruption, now longer than a similar 2019 outage, paralyzed CME's Globex platform, prompting traders to describe conditions as "flying dark" as liquidity, price discovery, and market signaling disappeared in seconds.

Exchanges connected to CME, including CBOT, NYMEX, COMEX, and even the Gulf Mercantile Exchange, also experienced disruptions. CME has not provided a reopening time.

Thomas Helaine, head of equity sales at TP ICAP Europe in Paris, told Bloomberg the outage is "a bit like flying dark," adding, "When you're trading cash equity like us, US futures give you an indication of where the market is going before the open. I can only imagine how complicated it must be for derivatives desks."

UBS equity trader Ed Abraham told clients, "Liquidity has reduced even more after the CME halted trading of commodities futures and options due to a cooling issue at a data center, providing no timeline for when the issue would be fixed. APAC." 

"Traders sitting with a position are certainly quite angry," said Gnanasekar Thiagarajan, head of trading and hedging strategies at Kaleesuwari Intercontinental.

Nick Twidale, chief analyst at AT Global Markets in Sydney, noted that traders "will be switching to alternative liquidity tools where they can. We've lost one of the market's major liquidity sources. This heightens the risk of exacerbated moves if a big event occurs."

The outage creates headaches for traders as they roll monthly contracts, leaving positions frozen. With US markets reopening for a shortened post-Thanksgiving session, broader equity markets in Europe and Asia were rather muted. 

Also, the outage highlights the extent to which CME serves as a backbone of global markets, where one data center cooling issue can ripple across exchanges worldwide.

Silver had to get cooled off

— marc friedrich (@marcfriedrich7) November 28, 2025

German analyst Marc Friedrich joked at CME's X post, "Silver had to get cooled off." 

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/28/2025 - 08:30

Global Chaos As CME Outage Halts Futures Trading, Markets Set For Monthly Loss

Normally, this is where we would tell you where US index futures are trading early in the morning, we can't because at 9:45pm ET on Thursday, the CME experienced a catastrophic "glitch" and all equities, treasuries, FX and commodities futures went dark as a result of a what the Chicago Merc Exchange said was a cooling system malfunction at its Chicago data center operated by CyrusOne. While the CME since restarted its EBS market, a platform used in foreign exchange, at noon London time, its major global futures markets from equities to bonds and commodities are still down. When the cash market opens, both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 will look to extend a four-day winning streak driven by growing confidence that the Fed will cut interest rates next month. Elsewhere, European bourses are mostly flat, with the FTSE 100 (+0.1%) the only major index posting gains. Overall market action is muted amid light news flow, reflecting both Thanksgiving and the CME issues. The Dollar is firmer within a 99.50–99.75 range, having found support at the half-round figure and pushed above Thursday’s 99.71 peak. European bonds are a little softer post-data; the EUR dipped during the releases but has since bounced off lows. Crude oil traded modestly higher, extending the prior session’s gains, although WTI trading was later halted due to the CME outage. Looking ahead, highlights Canadian GDP (Q3), German Nationwide HICP, Credit Review for France. Today is a shortened US session, with markets set to close just after noon ET.

Single stocks traded without incident in the premarket. Alphabet Inc. rose more than 1%, while Amazon.com Inc. also firmed as Black Friday shopping moved into full swing.  Individual stocks are trading, and all Mag 7 names are in the green:Alphabet (GOOGL +0.9%, Amazon +0.9%, Microsoft +0.8%, Tesla +0.6%, Meta +0.5%, Nvidia +0.4%, Apple +0.3%). Here are some other notable premarket movers:

• CNH Industrial (CNH) is down 1.2% after JPMorgan analyst Tami Zakaria cut the recommendation on the agricultural equipment maker to underweight from neutral, citing an industry outlook from Deere.
• Tilray Brands (TLRY) is down 13% after the cannabis company announced that it will implement a one-for-ten reverse stock split of its common stock.
• Shares in CME Group Inc. (CME), NYSE owner Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE) and Nasdaq Inc. (NDAQ) are in focus after the CME glitch

In corporate news, a fleet of planes that UPS grounded after a deadly crash isn’t expected to be back in service during the peak holiday season due to inspections and possible repairs.

After a volatile start to November, the S&P 500 narrowed its loss to about 0.4% before the Thanksgiving break. Expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates faster than first anticipated fueled a late-month rebound. The gauge had been down as much as 4.7% in November barely more than a week ago, as worries over stretched technology valuations rattled traders. Money markets were assigning roughly an 80% chance of a Fed cut in December before the CME disruption hit.

For markets still affected by the outage - which is most of them - the impact was significant. Trading of US Treasury futures remained halted, while cash bonds saw limited activity. European and UK bond markets that trade on a different exchange were unaffected. 

"Some market participants will take advantage of possible differences in prices,” said Guillermo Hernandez Sampere, head of trading at asset manager MPPM. “The majority will pause trading for risk reasons until the issues are resolved, otherwise losses are possible.”

For some, the timing of the disruption on Friday could cause particular inconvenience if it lasts, due to the need to roll positions from one contract to another. Friday is the expiry day for gasoline and diesel futures that can be settled with delivery of the actual physical fuel, adding a further potential complication for some traders. 

“The spillover from the Thanksgiving holiday and the fact there is no US data may on the face of it lessen the impact,” said Daniel Noorian, head of execution and quantitative services at Liquidnet. “Big concerns will be month-end flows and options expiry today in the weekly products.”

Gold saw erratic moves in early London trading, with the gap between bids and offers about 20 times wider than normal. US crude and palm oil on the Bursa Malaysia exchange were also affected.

According to an update, futures markets should reopen shortly...

• *CME GLOBEX FUTURES & OPTIONS MARKETS TO OPEN 7:30 CENTRAL TIME

Elsewhere, money markets are pricing in a more than 80% chance of a quarter-point rate cut in December, up substantially from about 30% before Williams' speech last Friday, and leaning toward three more in 2026. That’s helping ease concerns about AI spending and stretched valuations, which sparked a selloff earlier this month. The theme of intensifying AI competition continues to play out. Nvidia has fallen nearly 13% in under a month, while SoftBank - a major investor in OpenAI - is down almost 40% from its October peak. Conversely, tie-ups and new software are helping Google catch up in the global AI race.

Turning to the sad state of the US consumer, this Black Friday, bargains may be tougher to find. Retailers are trying to rein in discounting to mitigate Trump’s tariffs. Stores may struggle to keep shelves stocked with children’s gifts still overwhelmingly made in China as tariff-hit imports fall. 

In geopolitics, Putin signaled openness to talks about ending the war in Ukraine, saying Trump’s proposals could be the basis for future agreements. Efforts to end Russia’s war there are weighing on oil prices, set to fall for a fourth month running, the longest monthly losing streak in more than two years, ahead of a meeting of OPEC and its allies this weekend.

Europe Trading: European stocks were little-changed with steady with gains in the FTSE 100 and CAC 40. The Stoxx 600 is little changed as it heads for a 5th monthly gain. Delivery Hero shares rally as it’s said to be facing pressure from investors to sell at least parts of its business. Energy shares outperform, while the travel and leisure sector is among the laggards. Here are some of the biggest movers on Friday:

• Delivery Hero shares rally as much as 8.5% as it is said to be facing pressure from several large shareholders to conduct a strategic review amid increasing consolidation in the food-delivery industry.
• Mowi shares gain as much as 2.8%, the most in more than a month, after Berenberg raised its recommendation to buy from hold.
• Knorr-Bremse shares rise as much as 2.3%, the most since August, after Goldman Sachs initiated coverage with a recommendation of buy.
• EasyJet shares climb as much as 3.1% to a six-week high after Bernstein upgraded the stock to outperform from market-perform.
• Mitchells & Butlers shares gain as much as 8.2% on Friday, the most since May 2024, after the pub operator reported strong full-year results and robust current trading.
• Softwareone shares surge as much as 11% to their highest level in over a year on Friday, after Berenberg initiated coverage with a recommendation of buy.
• Whitbread shares slide as much as 9.2% to a seven-month low after Bernstein double-downgrades the stock following Wednesday’s UK budget.
• Sunrise Communications shares drop as much as 3.4% after JPMorgan cut its recommendation to underweight from neutral.
• Burberry shares fall as much as 4.6% after JPMorgan cut its recommendation to underweight from neutral.

Asian stocks fell for the first time this week, hampered by losses in high-flying South Korean tech names. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index dropped 0.3%, weighed down by the likes

In FX, the dollar is stronger versus major peers with the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index up 0.2%. Kiwi lags but is on track for a 1.7% weekly gain versus the dollar following a hawkish RBNZ cut earlier in the week. The euro is lower after regional euro-zone inflation metrics.

In commodities, oil was on track for a fourth monthly decline as traders looked ahead to this weekend’s OPEC+ meeting and assessed how a possible Ukraine peace agreement might influence an already oversupplied market. Brent held above $63 a barrel after a modest rise on Thursday. Spot gold is higher but saw a $20 move lower in early European trade, which could be linked to the lack of CME trade. 

Market Snapshot

• none as there are no futures actively traded

Top Overnight News

• CME Group (CME) says BrokerTec EU markets are open and trading, all other CME group markets remain halted amid the data center cooling issue at CyrusOne.
• CME announced that CME Globex futures and options markets were halted due to technical issues, and Cboe halted trading on C1 due to ongoing issues at CME. CME later announced that markets were halted due to a cooling issue at CyrusOne data centres, while it is working to resolve the outage issue and will advise clients of pre-open details as soon as available.
• US President Trump said that they may be cutting income tax almost completely because of tariff proceeds.
• US President Trump posted that he will permanently pause migration from all third-world countries to allow the US system to fully recover and will terminate all of the millions of Biden's illegal admissions, while he will end all federal benefits and subsidies to non-citizens.
• US President Trump ordered a review of all green card holders from countries "of concern" after the attack on National Guards in Washington DC, according to Axios.

Trade/Tariffs

• Nexperia issued an open letter to the leadership of Nexperia’s entities in China and noted that it continues to seek constructive collaboration with its entities in China, and has been requesting an open dialogue to find a path forward. Furthermore, it urged the leadership of Co.’s entities in China to take immediate steps towards structured negotiations to address the restoration of the supply chain, but added that it did not receive any meaningful response.
• Indonesia is reportedly resisting attempts by US President Trump to force it to accept a so-called “poison pill” and other coercive clauses in its “reciprocal tariff” trade deal with the US, according to FT.
• India expects to have a deal with the US before year-end as most issues are resolved, according to the Indian Trade Secretary
• EU Commission receives notifications from Apple (AAPL) under the Digital Market Act: Notifications from Apple (AAPL) indicated that its core platform services like Apple ads and maps meets the digital market thresholds.

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

APAC stocks were rangebound in the absence of a lead from Wall Street due to Thanksgiving Day and as participants digest a deluge of data at month-end. ASX 200 lacked direction as strength in the tech, mining and the consumer sectors is counterbalanced by losses in financials, real estate and telecoms. Nikkei 225 traded indecisively amid a slew of data in which Industrial Production and Retail Sales topped forecasts, while Unemployment rose and Tokyo CPI printed mostly in line with estimates, aside from the firmer-than-expected core reading. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp were mixed, albeit with trade confined to within relatively tight parameters, while China Vanke shares and bonds were volatile and initially continued to slump with its H shares hitting a record low amid the ongoing default concerns, before staging a notable recovery.

Top Asian News

• BoJ decided to increase the upper limit on the consecutive-day purchases of the same issue under the Securities Lending Facility (SLF) for 10-year JGBs from Dec 1st.
• Japan finalised JPY 18.3tln extra budget to fund stimulus package
• Samsung Electronics (005930 KS) appoints new CEO, Tae-Moon Roh.
• Meituan (3690 HK) Q3 (CNY): Revenue 95.5bln (exp. 97.5bln), Adj Net -16bln (exp. -13.96bln); sees operating loss trend to continue in Q4; market competition remained overheated recently.

European bourses are mostly flat, with the FTSE 100 (+0.1%) marginally higher this morning. Overall market action is muted amid light news flow, reflecting both Thanksgiving and the CME issues. European sectors are largely in the red. Basic Resources (+0.2%) and Energy (+0.3%) are marginal outperformers, supported by underlying moves in metals and energy. Laggards include Travel & Leisure (-0.7%), Autos (-0.4%) and Insurance (-0.4%). Ongoing Nexperia concerns continue to pressure Autos, as the company warns of imminent production halts.

Top European News

• S&P said UK public finances remain constrained and it expects fiscal pressures in the UK to persist over the medium term despite revenue-raising measures announced in the Autumn Budget, while it added that general government deficits are forecast to moderate through to 2028 and there are risks to the UK’s fiscal consolidation plan, especially toward the end of the forecast horizon.
• Moody's says UK budget affirms commitment to fiscal consolidation however, they highlight execution risk.
• ECB Consumer Expectations Survey results (October 2025); 12-month inflation expectations raised, 3- and 5-year expectations unchanged.

FX

• DXY is firmer within a 99.50–99.76 range, having found support at the half-round figure and pushed above Thursday’s 99.71 peak. Fresh catalysts have been limited overnight and through the European morning, with FX futures on CME halted due to an exchange issue. Comments from US President Trump noted they may be cutting income tax almost completely using tariff proceeds.
• EUR and GBP are subdued against the USD but flat versus each other, leaving downside in the USD pairs driven by the Dollar rather than EZ- or UK-specific developments.
• JPY is flat and uneventful amid thin conditions and few catalysts, with USD/JPY holding a 155.65–157.18 range, comfortably inside Thursday’s 154.37–157.89 span.
• NZD is pulling back after recent post-RBNZ outperformance, while AUD/NZ D remains near weekly lows (1.1400) after sliding from a 1.1536 pre-RBNZ high.

Fixed Income

• EGBs are ultimately a little softer post-data; the EUR dipped during the releases but has since bounced off lows.
• Bunds briefly pushed above 129.00 on cooler French HICP before fading, slipping back below 129.00 and extending losses to ~128.84 despite broadly softer German state CPI prints.
• Gilts contained overall, but have traversed a relatively wide range of just under 40 ticks as traders digest what appears to be another manifesto U-turn, by PM Starmer; markets now await the verdict from Chancellor Reeves on the matter.
• UK DMO to sell GBP 1bln 4.25% 2039 Gilt via tender on Dec 4th.

Commodities

• WTI and Brent traded with a positive bias overnight, extending the prior session’s gains. WTI trading was later halted due to the CME outage. Since then, Brent Feb ’26 has slipped from its overnight highs and is now moving within a USD 62.72–63.26/bbl range.
• Precious metals are firmer, though with limited catalysts this morning. Spot gold is confined to a narrow USD 4,147.92/oz–4,193.20/oz range, with geopolitics remaining the main focus.
• Base metals retain a strong positive tone, with 3M LME Copper trading near the top of its USD 10,940.56–11,008.40/t range. The current upside looks mainly like a modest rebound from recent pressure.
• Ukraine's military says it hit Russia's Saratov oil refinery.

Geopolitics

• Ukrainian President Zelensky said Ukrainian and US delegations will meet this week to work out a formula for peace and security discussed in the Geneva talks.
• Russia's Kremlin says Russia wants to try move towards peace in Ukraine despite its belief that Ukrainian President Zelensky is not legitimate.
• Ukrainian Presidential top aide said should not count on them giving up territory as long as Zelensky is President.
• Belgium warned that using frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine will endanger a peace deal, according to FT.
• US President Trump said regarding Venezuela that they will begin to stop drug cartels on land soon.
• Russian President Putin to visit India between December 4th-5th, according to IFX.
• Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to visit Russia between December 1st-2nd.

DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

Morning from Holland which was the last place I wanted to go yesterday after Liverpool were destroyed 4-1 at home to Dutch side PSV the previous evening. Staying with sport, today is the day where I been cleared to putt for 10 minutes a day maximum after recent back surgery. Tough to do that in a hotel room in Amsterdam as I type this so I'll wait for the weekend where I'll likely force my kids to spend 3 hours on the putting green with me tomorrow.  

Whilst our 2026 outlook might be called “Anything but dull”, the last 24 hours have been "everything dull" with the US out for Thanksgiving, and few headlines elsewhere. Even an overnight outage at the CME, which means many futures contracts (including US equity futures) haven't traded since around 2.45am London time, hasn't really been noticed! The problem seems to be a "cooling issue" at a data centre. Given the exponential surge in data centres for other reasons in recent quarters that's an interesting development!
When there was trading in the last 24 hours, you could just about squint your eyes and argue that the risk-on tone generally continued, with Europe’s STOXX 600 (+0.14%) just about posting a 4th consecutive gain. And to be fair, there were some other signs that sentiment was recovering, with Bitcoin (+1.35%) closing at a one-week high of $91,410. Today some life will be breathed into markets with CPI in Germany, France and Italy and later we'll start hearing the first snippets of news around Black Friday sales - a key barometer of the health of the consumer and the companies that rely on them.   

That pattern of modest equity advances played out across Europe, with little divergence across sectors or countries. Indeed, none of the big sector groups in the STOXX 600 posted any sharp moves yesterday, and the other major indices also posted small advances. So the DAX (+0.18%), the CAC 40 (+0.04%) and the FTSE MIB (+0.21%) each only rose slightly. Similarly for sovereign bonds, there was a modest uptick in yields across Europe, with those on 10yr bunds (+0.8bps), OATs (+1.3bps) and BTPs (+1.2bps) all a bit higher.  

Yet despite that modest recovery in sentiment, UK markets struggled after Wednesday’s budget, paring back some of their outperformance immediately after the statement. That was driven by a sense that lots of the structural issues hadn’t gone away, particularly as most of the tax rises had been backloaded into the later years of the forecast. So the FTSE 100 (+0.02%) was one of the weaker performers among the big European indices, and gilt yields rose across the curve, with the 10yr yield (+2.6bps) up to 4.45%. Now admittedly, gilt yields are still beneath their pre-budget levels on Wednesday morning, but the partial reversal fed into wider concerns that the budget had only bought the UK time on its fiscal position, rather than putting things on a permanently sustainable path.  

Otherwise, there were a few more headlines on the Ukraine peace talks, although nothing that was particularly market moving. The original Thanksgiving deadline for peace is now looking a touch optimistic with hindsight! However there is progress, but whether this can translate into a deal is a big question. For instance, President Putin commented on the US proposals, saying that “In general, we agree that this can form the basis for future agreements”. However, he also said that “it would be impolite of me to talk about any final versions now. There are none.” So there remains a general scepticism that we’re on the verge of an imminent breakthrough, and the Polymarket odds still only suggest a 27% chance that a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire will be reached by the end of March. Against that backdrop, both oil prices and European defence stocks rose a bit, with Brent crude (+0.33%) up to $63.34/bbl. However, the moves were in line with the broader risk-on tone, rather than obviously driven by any developments on the peace talks.

Meanwhile in the US, both equity and bond markets were closed for Thanksgiving, but the futures markets that were opened showed barely any movement either. So around the time of the European close, futures on the S&P 500 were completely flat, and Treasury futures indicated that yields would only rise by up to a basis point across the curve. On the topic of holidays, remember as well that today will have an earlier close than usual in the US, with the New York Stock Exchange closing at 1pm Eastern time.  

Asian equity markets are mostly lower this morning as the rebound in technology shares has lost some momentum. Across the region, the KOSPI (-1.51%) stands out as the largest underperformer, with the index down nearly -4.0% for November, while the Nikkei is flat as a series of robust economic data drummed up expectations that the BOJ will have enough headroom to raise interest rates soon (details below). Elsewhere, Chinese stocks are a little mixed, with the Hang Seng (-0.28%) recording slight losses, whereas the Shanghai Composite (+0.10%) is slightly higher. US equity futures haven't traded since around 2.45am London time due to the CME glitch discussed at the top. When they last did the S&P 500 (+0.11%) and NASDAQ 100 (+0.18%) were higher.  

Turning back to Japan, the core CPI in Tokyo increased by +2.8% year-on-year in November. This figure was slightly above the anticipated 2.7% and remained consistent with the previous month’s reading. Moreover, the headline Tokyo CPI inflation held steady at 2.7% year-on-year. In a separate report, industrial production rose by 1.4% month-on-month in October, contrasting with expectations of a -0.6% decline, and a slowdown from a +2.6% increase in September, thus providing a tentative indication that manufacturing activity is stabilising after several months of inconsistent factory output. Meanwhile, retail sales surged by +1.6% month-on-month in October (compared to the +0.8% expected), rebounding on the anticipation of tax cuts and more expansionary policies under the new administration. 10yr JGBs are up another +2.2bps this morning.  

Finally yesterday, the ECB published the account from their last meeting in October, where they kept their deposit rate at 2%. It said that keeping rates “at their current levels would allow for more information to become available to assess the risk factors that the Governing Council had discussed.” Later on however, there was an interesting discussion on “possible strategies for future monetary policy”. It said that one view was expressed “that the rate-cutting cycle had come to an end”, but another view argued “that it was important to remain entirely open-minded on the possible need for a further rate cut”.

To the day ahead now, and data releases include the November flash CPI prints from Germany, France and Italy, as well as German unemployment for November, and Canada’s Q3 GDP. Then from central banks, we’ll hear from Bundesbank President Nagel.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/28/2025 - 08:21

This Is The Income Needed To Join The Top 1% In Every State

What it takes to join the top 1% of earners varies across the United States.

This map, via Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti, highlights the income floor required to enter the wealthiest bracket in each state for 2025.

The spread is wide, stretching from over $1 million at the top to barely $400,000 in less wealthy states.

High-paying industries like finance, technology, and professional services cluster in coastal states, pushing top incomes even higher. Meanwhile, states with smaller economies and lower costs of living require far less to reach the elite group.

The data for this visualization comes from SmartAsset. It ranks all 50 states by the annual income required to enter the top 1%, based on tax return data. The table below also includes the number of households in this bracket and the corresponding income floor for the top 5%.

Where You Need the Most to Join the 1%

Connecticut tops the list with a $1,056,996 income floor, making it the only state above the $1 million mark.

Rank State Top 1% of earners # of top 1% returns Top 5% of earners 1 Connecticut $1,056,996 16,917 $362,263 2 Massachusetts $965,170 32,795 $378,434 3 California $905,396 175,045 $353,073 4 New Jersey $901,082 43,042 $367,108 5 New York $891,640 91,840 $307,753 6 Florida $859,381 105,101 $281,811 7 Washington $819,101 35,597 $355,767 8 Colorado $772,989 27,685 $318,659 9 Wyoming $771,369 2,611 $255,320 10 Texas $743,955 128,130 $284,661 11 New Hampshire $735,374 6,796 $311,145 12 Illinois $731,202 56,794 $292,729 13 Nevada $703,713 14,754 $248,739 14 Virginia $701,792 39,103 $314,694 15 North Dakota $695,759 3,431 $272,755 16 Utah $690,548 13,991 $270,645 17 South Dakota $687,190 4,062 $255,851 18 Maryland $677,543 29,040 $304,250 19 Minnesota $671,408 26,423 $285,607 20 Georgia $662,821 46,220 $267,958 21 Montana $656,830 5,101 $251,774 22 Pennsylvania $655,636 58,541 $272,141 23 Arizona $641,262 31,872 $261,362 24 North Carolina $640,783 46,525 $268,730 25 Tennessee $638,299 30,531 $247,765 26 Idaho $627,839 8,145 $249,451 27 Kansas $609,946 12,643 $253,834 28 Nebraska $603,899 8,660 $251,139 29 Rhode Island $603,162 5,224 $258,276 30 Oregon $603,006 19,053 $270,877 31 Alaska $586,381 3,223 $266,499 32 Vermont $583,559 3,123 $249,931 33 South Carolina $580,600 23,203 $241,531 34 Delaware $578,580 4,726 $260,787 35 Wisconsin $566,711 27,293 $242,066 36 Michigan $561,582 45,218 $241,403 37 Hawaii $561,147 6,472 $249,850 38 Missouri $559,043 26,898 $237,461 39 Iowa $554,046 13,821 $241,591 40 Louisiana $551,125 18,593 $225,674 41 Maine $550,936 6,618 $236,338 42 Ohio $550,724 53,103 $232,196 43 Oklahoma $544,679 16,106 $224,074 44 Alabama $532,600 20,185 $226,634 45 Indiana $531,332 30,120 $227,098 46 Arkansas $517,761 12,198 $217,087 47 Kentucky $496,281 18,395 $215,196 48 New Mexico $451,639 9,310 $211,101 49 Mississippi $439,479 11,731 $195,171 50 West Virginia $416,310 7,316 $196,335

Massachusetts ($965,170) and California ($905,396) follow in second and third place, both supported by large, high-skill job markets. States in the Northeast and along the West Coast dominate the top positions due to dense economic activity and elevated earnings in specialized industries.

Middle-Tier States Still Require High Earnings

States like Colorado, Washington, and Virginia sit in the upper-middle tier, requiring between $700,000 and $820,000 to qualify for the top 1%. These states benefit from fast-growing metropolitan areas, strong tech or government-driven employment, and rising household incomes.

Even in energy-focused states such as Wyoming and North Dakota, the income floors exceed $690,000, showing how pockets of high-paying industries influence overall thresholds.

The Most Affordable States for Top 1% Status

At the bottom of the ranking, West Virginia’s $416,310 threshold is the lowest in the country, followed by Mississippi ($439,479) and New Mexico ($451,639). Lower costs of living, smaller urban job markets, and fewer high-paying industry clusters contribute to these more modest thresholds.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out Visualizing the Cost of the American Dream on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/28/2025 - 07:45

My Shopmas morning reads:

• 10 European Sports Cars You Should Buy Used. There is an undeniable appeal to European sports cars that you can’t and won’t find anywhere else. We have assembled a list of the best used European sports cars you can buy from the last decade or so, at abpotu half price or less than new. Despite their cost, when you are behind the wheel of these select few European sports cars, you feel like you are driving the best the world has to offer. Hard to beat half-price! (Top Speed)

• US Consumers Dial Back in Sign of Anxiety Heading Into Holidays: US consumers showed signs of fatigue leading up to the longest government shutdown, and their outlook has worsened ever since, sending a note of caution heading into the holiday-shopping season. (Bloomberg) see also The US economy’s 7 deadly signs: Parts of the America’s economy are already in deep trouble, and the weakness could drag the whole country into a recession. (Business Insider)

• The Best Way to Do a Roth IRA Conversion Before Retirement: A one-time transfer outperforms an equal-installments method in most tax situations, research finds. (Wall Street Journal)

• How to Never Be Stranded After a Canceled Flight Plus other travel tips from Away founder Jen Rubio, such as saving serious cash at duty-free, maximizing your in-flight amenity kit, and packing the one gadget to help you fall asleep quickly wherever your bed may be. (Bloomberg)

• Personalized mRNA Vaccines Will Revolutionize Cancer Treatment—If Funding Cuts Don’t Doom Them: Vaccines based on mRNA can be tailored to target a cancer patient’s unique tumor mutations. But crumbling support for cancer and mRNA vaccine research has endangered this promising therapy. (Scientific American)

• International Nationalism: As with fiber, we are in an unsettled period, with no obvious answer, and lots of chaotic, one-off gestures towards de-dollarization. For example, Ethiopia is re-valuing its foreign debt in Chinese renminbi. (Pluralistic)

• How Louvre thieves exploited human psychology to avoid suspicion—and what it reveals about AI: For humans and AI, when something fits the category of “ordinary,” it slips from notice.  (The Conversation)

• Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna’s months-long campaign to outmaneuver the White House on the Epstein files started with a text. Inside the effort to force Trump’s hand on Epstein. (Washington Post)

• Winners of the 2025 Drone Photo Awards: Explore the Beauty of the World Above. (My Modern Met) see also 13 dizzying and dazzling images from 2025 Drone Photo Awards: A lone camel, a hungry polar bear, and a congregation of herons. (Popular Science)

• How Mark Wahlberg Became The King Of Streaming: As theatrical releases decline, the 54-year-old actor has become the most bankable star on Netflix, Amazon and Apple—earning $20 million or more a movie—in a major paradigm shift of Hollywood economics. Inside the new A-Minus List. (Forbes)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Wilhelm Schmid, CEO of famed watchmaker A. Lange & Söhne, the Glashütte, German watchmaker, recorded live at the Audrain Newport Concours d’Elegance.

 

No sector is hurting worse than manufacturing, which continues to shed jobs at a rapid rate. The auto industry has swung from expansion under Biden to contraction under Trump

Source: Noahpinion

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

 

 

The post 10 Black Friday Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

After October's 'Liquidation Day' Collapse, ADL Are The 3 Most Important Letters In Crypto

Via Wu Blockchain,

Hyperliquid Activates Cross-Margin Auto-Deleveraging for the First Time: What Are HLP and ADL?

In October 2025, Hyperliquid, one of the leading decentralized perpetual futures exchanges, triggered its cross-margin Auto-Deleveraging (ADL) mechanism for the first time in over two years of operation.

This event signals an extremely volatile market moment — one where even the platform’s own insurance vault (HLP) couldn’t fully absorb liquidation risk.

To understand what this means, we need to unpack two key components of Hyperliquid’s risk architecture: HLP and ADL.

1. What Is HLP?

The Protocol Vault as the System’s Safety Net

HLP stands for Hyperliquid Protocol Vault — essentially a shared liquidity and backstop pool built into the protocol.

Think of it as a public insurance fund or a community vault that anyone can deposit assets into. The funds in HLP serve two main purposes:

1. Provide market liquidity – It helps keep order books liquid, tightening spreads and enabling smoother trading.

2. Act as a backstop during liquidations – When a trader’s position is forcibly liquidated and the market lacks buyers or sellers to absorb the trade, HLP steps in. It takes over the losing position’s remaining collateral and assumes the exposure.

In simple terms, HLP acts as a “public good” mechanism — ensuring that even during severe market shocks, the system remains solvent (no negative equity or bad debt).

Analogy: The Backup Player in a Casino

Imagine Hyperliquid as a massive on-chain casino where everyone’s betting on BTC’s price.

If a player loses all their chips, they must be removed from the table.

But if no one wants to take over that seat, the HLP vault acts like the casino owner’s backup player, stepping in with its own money to keep the game running.

To reduce risk concentration, the protocol splits HLP into several child vaults, each covering different markets or assets.

2. What Is ADL?

The Final Line of Defense: Auto-Deleveraging

ADL, or Auto-Deleveraging, stands for the system’s last-resort risk control mechanism.It only triggers when both regular liquidations and HLP backstops fail.

Why Is Liquidation Needed?

In perpetual futures markets, every long position (betting on price increase) must have a matching short position (betting on a decrease).Each trader provides margin — collateral that ensures they can cover potential losses.

When prices move sharply, losing positions can deplete their margin. To prevent “negative balances,” the system must force-liquidate them — effectively selling or offsetting their positions so that the winner gets paid and the market stays balanced.

Without liquidation, the platform could go insolvent — something no exchange, centralized or decentralized, can afford.

3. The Three-Step Liquidation Waterfall

Hyperliquid’s liquidation process can be visualized as a three-step waterfall:

This third step, rarely used, was just triggered for the first time — showing the system’s self-balancing mechanisms working under stress.

4. How ADL Works in Practice

When a losing side’s margin is completely wiped out and HLP can’t cover the residual loss, the system initiates forced deleveraging from the profitable side.

● Triggered Side: The losing party (e.g., long positions during a crash).

● Providing Side: The winning party (e.g., shorts making large profits).

The system automatically ranks all profitable traders based on:

Profit × Leverage × Position Size

Those with the highest profit and leverage are first in line for forced position reduction — they get partially closed at the current mark price, realizing their gains early.

Why “Punish” Winners?

It’s not about punishment — it’s about maintaining systemic balance.

If no one remains to take the losing side of the contract, the exchange must close out part of the winning side to prevent imbalance.

Analogy: It’s like an oversold flight. The airline first offers incentives for volunteers to step off (market + HLP).When no one volunteers, it forces the biggest seat-holders — the “first-class whales” — to leave.

Unfair? Maybe. Necessary? Absolutely — otherwise the plane can’t take off.

5. Why ADL Matters — and What It Tells Us

ADL is a crisis-only mechanism, designed to protect solvency in extreme market conditions.

● For the platform, it ensures the perpetual futures system never goes bankrupt.

● For traders, it’s a reminder: even if you’re winning big, high leverage exposes you to forced deleveraging.

● For the ecosystem, it demonstrates the maturity of on-chain risk governance — markets that can self-liquidate without external bailouts.

6. The Bigger Picture: A Necessary Imperfection

ADL is not a bug; it’s a safety fuse.

It doesn’t penalize success — it ensures survival. In a leveraged zero-sum system, when volatility dries up liquidity, someone must step out to keep the game fair and solvent.

ADL guarantees that the perpetual futures market — however chaotic — can keep operating.In that sense, an ADL event isn’t a failure.

It’s a sign that the market has reached its stress limit and the protocol has handled it — automatically, transparently, and without human intervention.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/28/2025 - 06:30

The Dangers Of AI: Visualizing The Top Risks Companies Face

Companies are rushing to implement AI, but it’s not all smooth sailing.

More than half of businesses say the dangers of AI have led to at least one negative consequence.

But which issues plague businesses the most?

This infographic, via Visual Capitalist's Jenna Ross, breaks down the most common risks.

It’s a preview of the brand-new executive guide from Terzo and Visual Capitalist, AI’s Illusion of Truth: The Data Behind AI Errors.

The Top Dangers of AI

Inaccuracy is the biggest risk companies report, with almost a third experiencing a negative consequence at least once.

Source: McKinsey, online survey of 1,753 participants conducted June 25 to July 29, 2025.

The other dangers of AI are reported on a much lower scale. Explainability, which is the ability for people to understand an AI system’s inner workings, has affected half as many companies as inaccuracy has.

The Knock-On Effects of Errors

AI inaccuracy can lead to much bigger issues. It undermines trust in AI systems, causes operational inefficiencies, and can lead to flawed strategic decisions. When AI generates incorrect outputs, the damage is often amplified through cascading processes.

It also has the potential to create legal issues. As the Harvard Law School recently pointed out, many insurance companies are adding limitations or excluding coverage for AI-related losses. This means that leaders may not be covered under traditional Directors & Officers policies for any liabilities that arise from AI errors.

Next Steps for Leaders

Many companies have started taking steps to combat the dangers of AI. In fact, 54% of businesses are actively working to mitigate AI inaccuracies.

Leaders can take charge by ensuring their teams have humans in the loop to review AI’s output before it is used. 

See the data behind AI’s errors and how to get 99% accuracy in the free executive guide, AI’s Illusion of Truth.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/28/2025 - 05:45

Poland Resists EU Court Order To Recognize Same-Sex Marriage

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Poland’s government and leading opposition figures have publicly pushed back against suggestions that the European Union can compel Warsaw to recognize same-sex marriages, despite a landmark ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) requiring Poland to acknowledge a marriage legally concluded in another member state.

Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński insisted on Wednesday that this week’s judgment does not equate to Brussels overruling Polish sovereignty.

“Since yesterday, many untruths have accumulated in this matter. Interpretations are already emerging that say: the EU is imposing its legislation on us. So no – it cannot impose its legislation on us,” he said, adding that the judgment alone “cannot force a change in Polish law in this regard.”

He stated that the government will outline how the ruling will be handled only “after thorough analyses by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Justice.”

The ruling — issued on Tuesday by the EU’s top court — found that Poland acted incompatibly with EU law when it refused to recognize the marriage of two Polish men who married in Berlin in 2018 and sought legal recognition upon returning home.

The CJEU held that while marriage legislation remains a national competency, a member state cannot obstruct EU citizens’ freedom to move and maintain family life across borders.

The judges concluded that denying recognition “may cause serious inconvenience at administrative, professional, and private levels” and would breach both free movement rights and the right to family life, enshrined in the European treaties and human rights legislation.

The judgment stopped short of requiring Poland to legalize same-sex marriage domestically, but it does obligate Warsaw to treat foreign same-sex marriages the same way it treats opposite-sex marriages for the purpose of recognition.

Under current law, transcription of foreign marriage certificates is the sole method for acknowledgment — a system the court said must now apply equally to same-sex couples. The move opens the door to same-sex couples in Poland, knowing they can return and insist upon the same rights as heterosexual couples.

Political fallout was immediate. President Karol Nawrocki, who has repeatedly taken a hard line against perceived EU overreach and is framed as a Eurosceptic within the Polish political landscape, was publicly defended by Przemysław Czarnek, deputy chairman of the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, who said Poland should not be expected to accept every directive from the EU.

“When they ask us to reduce CO₂ emissions by 90 percent, we really have to say: Down with it,” Czarnek said.

He argued the same stance should apply to “rulings of the Court of Justice of the EU on same-sex marriage,” adding: “We are not condemned to be in the European Union, the Union is not our homeland, Brussels is not our capital.”

Czarnek, a former education minister, said the EU was originally a peace project but has drifted toward unification that “goes beyond the original plans.” Membership still offers value, he said, but “if it destroys our Christian worldview, then we have to say NO. We have to weigh the costs and benefits.” He stressed that EU membership should last only so long as Poland can safeguard its interests.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/28/2025 - 05:00

Mapping Global Real Estate Bubble Risk In 2025

Globally, real estate markets have been cooling over the last few years, with high mortgage rates and unaffordable prices affecting demand in many cities.

However, while housing bubble risks have eased across many markets, home prices in real estate hotspots like Miami and Tokyo continue to rise, inflating their bubble risk.

This infographic, via Visual Capitalist's Niccolo Conte, shows the cities with the highest bubble risk worldwide based on the UBS Global Real Estate Bubble Index 2025.

Where Housing Markets Look Most Overheated

UBS’ Real Estate Bubble Index evaluates housing markets around the world using a range of indicators, including price-to-income ratios, price-to-rent ratios, and trends in mortgage lending and construction activity.

Cities are classified into three broad categories based on their index score:

• Bubble Risk: >1.5
• Overvalued: 0.5 to 1.5
• Fairly Valued: -0.5 to 0.5

Below is the full 2025 ranking of cities by UBS’s Bubble Index score, along with the annual real price change:

Rank City Bubble Risk Index Score Annual real home price change (2024 to 2025) 1 Miami 1.73 1.9% 2 Tokyo 1.59 5.7% 3 Zurich 1.55 5.0% 4 Los Angeles 1.11 0.9% 5 Dubai 1.09 11.1% 6 Amsterdam 1.06 1.2% 7 Geneva 1.05 4.1% 8 Toronto 0.8 -7.5% 9 Sydney 0.8 0.8% 10 Madrid 0.77 13.6% 11 Frankfurt 0.76 -1.2% 12 Vancouver 0.76 -5.9% 13 Munich 0.64 1.4% 14 Singapore 0.55 2.6% 15 Hong Kong 0.44 -7.9% 16 London 0.34 -2.1% 17 San Francisco 0.28 -2.6% 18 New York 0.26 -1.5% 19 Paris 0.25 0.1% 20 Milan 0.01 -2.7% 21 São Paulo -0.1 0.0%

The majority of cities in the index saw their bubble risk decline since 2024, with Toronto and Hong Kong experiencing the largest drops.

However, bubble risk rose in Miami, which ranks highest with an index score of 1.73, supported by rising home prices. Tokyo and Zurich also sit above the critical 1.5 threshold.

Meanwhile, several real estate markets fall into the overvalued range but remain below the bubble-risk territory. These include Madrid, which saw the strongest rise in real home prices, up 13.6% from 2024 to 2025.

Dubai is another notable city in the overvalued bucket, with prices rising by over 11% year-over-year. According to UBS, average real prices in Dubai have grown by around 50% over the last five years. However, prices could potentially cool off in 2026 following a record increase in supply.

Where Real Estate Bubble Risk Declined in 2025

Several housing markets are undergoing corrections after the post-pandemic uproar in prices.

Toronto, one of the world’s most unaffordable housing markets, has seen its bubble risk score fall sharply, accompanied by a -7.5% real home price decline. Hong Kong saw an even larger drop in price levels, at -7.9%, pushing it into the fairly-valued category.

Other cities, including Vancouver, Frankfurt, London, and San Francisco, also reported price declines as affordability constraints and higher borrowing costs weighed on demand.

To learn more about this topic, see this graphic on the world’s most expensive housing markets on Voronoi.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/28/2025 - 04:15

Britain's Official COVID Handling Inquiry Blames "Toxic Culture" For A Late Lockdown

Authored by Bruce Oliver Newsome via American Greatness,

Last week, Britain’s official inquiry into the government’s handling of COVID released its second report.

Despite spending £192 million, interviewing 166 witnesses, and publishing more than 1,000 pages already, the most expensive public inquiry in British history (£160,000 per day) cherry-picks four persons to blame, blames these four persons for a “toxic and chaotic culture,” and cherry-picks evidence in support of earlier preventive measures and lockdown.

Note 1 to Britain’s elite: Four people don’t make a “culture” in a government of more than half a million full-time servants and politicians!

Note 2 to Britain’s elite: Groups have processes and structures too, not just cultures.

Procedurally, why was the government making decisions about lockdown without a cost-benefit analysis, even in the Treasury, according to the then Chancellor (Rishi Sunak)?

The report quotes Dominic Cummings making the same complaint, but leaves it hanging.

Structurally, should the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies have led policy-making, gone public with information in opposition to the administration it advised, and even briefed against ministers who don’t “follow the science?”

The inquiry doesn’t ask these questions.

The report betrays an annoying ignorance of risk management. It uses the word “could” 151 times, “might” 70 times, and “possibly” or “possible” 69 times. These are the words that lawyers and politicians love (for their open-endedness). These are the same words that consumers of risk estimates hate (for their open-endedness). An asteroid “could” and “might” destroy the earth. Now what?

The word “unlikely” is used just twice. The word “likely” is used 79 times, but, as we shall see, some of the report’s estimates of “likely” are based on already-discredited models.

The COVID inquiry is typical of British official inquiries.

For decades, British official inquiries into healthcare have identified a “toxic culture,” associated this culture with a few scapegoats or political enemies, and ignored structure and process.

1. In 2013, Julie Mellor, then the Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), criticized the NHS for a “toxic cocktail” of a “culture of defensiveness” and “a failure to listen to feedback.”

2. Later that year, a clinical professor completed an inquiry into safety within the wider NHS, which recommends a “zero harm” culture, a legal duty for all healthcare workers to admit their mistakes, and “minimum staffing levels.”

3. In 2014, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt promised an “open culture that learns from errors and corrects them,” following the example of the airline industry (a false analogy, incidentally).

4. In 2015, Parliament’s Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) “commend[ed] the Secretary of State’s determination to tackle the culture of blame and defensiveness.”

Criticizing “culture” is a way of avoiding accountability for the people and institutions you like. Culture is an attribute of a group, so it is no one person’s fault, except anyone you want to scapegoat.

The people who run official inquiries are politicians, lawyers, and public servants who know nothing of organizational design but know a lot about smearing political enemies. Moreover, while they cherry-pick a few to throw under the bus, they avoid the unfitness of the wider elite they represent.

Baroness Heather Hallett’s inquiry into Britain’s handling of COVID falls into the same pattern. She’s a lawyer and a politician. She never called any witnesses who could have educated her in organizational design or political science.

Nevertheless, she brought all sorts of bad assumptions, myths, and habits of thinking about organizations and politics. Hallett’s assumptions, myths, and habits are typical of the progressive-socialist consensus.

Hallett’s report blames a “toxic and chaotic culture” on four people: the Prime Minister Boris Johnson, his special adviser Dominic Cummings, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock, and the Permanent Secretary for Health—now Keir Starmer’s Cabinet Secretary—Sir Chris Wormald.

The inquiry criticizes Wormald for a “failure to rein in” Hancock’s tendency to over-promise, which suggests that Hallett wishes that unelected government servants were as bold as Aristotle’s unelected philosopher-kings.

Hallett wishes Wormald had been bold enough to drive earlier restrictions on British freedoms.

Outside of Britain’s government, the inquiry criticizes Nicola Sturgeon for over-promising, in June 2020, that Scotland could drive COVID “as far as we can towards total elimination” (despite an open border with England).

Yet beyond these convenient scapegoats, the inquiry doesn’t help us avoid similar missteps in the future—apart from:

1. Don’t employ Johnson, Cummings, Hancock, Wormald, or Sturgeon.

2. Don’t allow a “toxic and chaotic culture.”

3. Impose restrictions earlier, even though the restrictions didn’t work.

The report “rejects the criticism” of the imposition of lockdown in 2020. Moreover, the report criticizes the government’s decision against lockdown in 2021 (when the Omicron variant appeared), because “the UK government’s approach in this period was, once again, overly optimistic.”

Yet the same report hypocritically claims not to be advocating for lockdowns and to be mindful of the economic losses, social costs, missed education, and loss of liberties.

Hallett criticizes the government’s failure to predict all the losses and costs but also claims that lockdowns could have been “avoided entirely” had “stringent restrictions” been imposed earlier than 16 March 2020.

The inquiry ignores the possibility that voluntary behavioral adjustment would have produced the same outcomes in Britain. Google mobility data shows that Britons had reduced movement before the lockdown was announced.

Instead, the report claims that earlier contact tracing, self-isolation, face coverings, and respiratory hygiene could have stopped the need for a lockdown if introduced earlier.

The report does not admit that

1. The contact tracing app took too long to develop and never worked properly.

2. Home tests of infection were unreliable.

3. Compliance with self-isolation tended to extremes of either partying in Number 10 or deadly loneliness.

4. Cloth masks didn’t work as promised.

5. Respiratory hygiene is a moral hazard (you might cover your cough, but plenty of people sitting next to you do not).

Moreover, Hallett does not admit any issue linkage or ulterior motive behind these restrictions. Lord Frost (then Johnson’s chief adviser on Europe) writes that “a turning point for me was being in a meeting in mid-2020 in which we were told that masks had no meaningful effect but should be required anyway ‘to remind everyone we were in a pandemic.’”

Hallett claims that once these “stringent restrictions” failed, lockdown was inevitable.

Moreover, Hallett claims that 23,000 lives could have been saved if lockdown had been imposed a week earlier—a conclusion derived solely from a model that had always overestimated casualties.

Hallett dismisses Sweden’s choice against lockdown, as if Sweden’s choice was for freedom over safety. Hallett never called to witness the academics who had already found that Sweden experienced fewer deaths and lower costs per capita, even adjusting for demographics.

The Telegraph reported Hallett’s product as a £200 million “I told you so.” Oliver Johnson, a mathematician, tweeted: “I see that if you give lawyers £200m and ask them to focus solely on the first wave, they decide we should have made the first wave as small as possible.”

The problem with British governance is that we are ruled by unaccountable non-experts. These same people are both unqualified and disincentivized to reveal the unaccountability and non-expertise within the class they inhabit.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/28/2025 - 03:30

If You 'Identify' As A Woman, Don't Go Here...

According to the Georgetown Institute 2025/26 Women Peace and Security Index, women's safety and security was least guaranteed in countries like Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Haiti, Sudan and the Central African Republic.

Beyond such drastic examples, Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports that the publication also gave bad grades concerning women's safety to large swathes of Africa as well as parts of the Middle East, South Asia and Central America.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The index employs a broad perspective on women's security, not only analyzing the incidence of violence against women and prevalence of discrimination, but also women's independence, taking the view that women who are educated, employed and autonomous are much safer from violence.

Overall, Asia and Africa were identified as the least safe places for women.

In Latin America, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras stuck out as places that are especially dangerous. 

In Europe, Balkan and some other Eastern European nations fared worse than the continents' average.

In Asia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Papua New Guinea were also among those receiving the worst grades.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/28/2025 - 02:45

Allies In The Age Of 'De-Risking'

Authored by Charles Davis via The Epoch Times,

The debate in Washington often treats allied policy toward China as a loyalty test—are you “with us” or “soft”? That’s the wrong frame.

Across the Indo-Pacific and beyond, close U.S. partners are converging on a pragmatic line: keep markets open where possible, harden national security where necessary, and build redundancy in supply chains so no single chokepoint—Beijing’s or anyone else’s—can hold the economy hostage. That logic aligns with the Reagan–Trump piece: deterrence through real channels, “plumbing” in supply chains, and coast-guard-first crisis management.

Canada: Warm Optics, Hard Guardrails

Beijing’s late-October global message framed the meeting between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney as a “turnaround,” invoking the “20th anniversary of the China–Canada strategic partnership” and saying both sides would “jointly advance” it.

Ottawa’s perspective was notably cooler, describing a pragmatic reset and workmanlike efforts to clear trade “irritants,” avoiding the “strategic partnership” language. The label itself is not new: Beijing has used it since the relationship was raised in 2005 under then-Prime Minister Paul Martin and then-Chinese leader Hu Jintao, and Chinese statements this fall repeated that phrasing even as Ottawa sidestepped it. The nuance matters because markets and allies read signals carefully.

Beneath the rhetoric, the policy architecture points in one direction: tighter security and selective economic reopening. Canada’s May 2022 decision barred Huawei and ZTE from 5G networks and set removal deadlines—June 28, 2024, for 5G gear and end-2027 for legacy 4G—while pushing operators to halt procurement as of September 2022. It tightened controls on the essentials without triggering a full break.

Parliament also enacted the Countering Foreign Interference Act in June 2024. This measure created a Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability regime and strengthened authorities across the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Criminal Code. Read it alongside departmental briefing books, and you see a through-line: Ottawa is expanding legal and administrative tools even as it tests a trade thaw. The result is a diplomatic reset tailored with harder domestic guardrails.

That reading also answers a recent op-ed claim that Ottawa “declared” a strategic relationship amid hybrid threats. Beijing certainly emphasized the term. Ottawa did not. When we anchor to primary records—government documents and statements, as well as the statutes and telecom directives—the story is not capitulation but compartmentalization: warmer tone for markets and consular problem-solving, as well as firmer lines around critical tech and interference. That is the same pattern we see in Japan, Australia, and the Philippines.

Japan: Rearming Carefully, Walling Off the Crown-Jewel Tech

Tokyo’s 2022 National Security Strategy marked a generational shift: lift defense spending toward 2 percent of GDP by fiscal year 2027 and acquire counter-strike capacity, including Tomahawk land-attack missiles. Contracts signed in January 2024 locked in hundreds of Tomahawks to accelerate that capability, with public justifications tied to Chinese and North Korean missile trends. The politics are sensitive; the trajectory is clear.

President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi hold up signed documents for a critical minerals/rare-earth deal with Japan during a meeting at Akasaka Palace in Tokyo, on Oct. 28, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

On technology, Japan tightened export licensing on 23 categories of advanced chip-making equipment in 2023—a surgical, globally aligned control that protects critical interests and technology, while keeping other trade lanes open. Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s notices and subsequent white papers make explicit that these are Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act (FEFTA)-based security controls aimed at high-risk transfers, not a halt to commerce. This is the template allies are gravitating toward. U.S. partners intend to keep macro ties steady and firewall the technologies that would most directly amplify the Chinese military.

The Philippines: Access for Crises, Evidence for Gray-Zone Pressure

Manila has expanded U.S. access under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), adding four sites in 2023: Naval Base Camilo Osias and Lal-lo Airport in Cagayan; Camp Melchor Dela Cruz in Isabela; and Balabac Island in Palawan. The decision has enabled strategic access to logistics, medevac, and refueling within hours rather than weeks. Filipino military leaders’ statements and site visits underline that the infrastructure partnership is for both external defense and disaster response.

All of this plays out amid coercion across the South China Sea. Around Second Thomas Shoal, Chinese coast-guard and militia tactics intensified in 2024—water-cannoning, rammings, and even boardings that injured Filipino sailors—documented by Reuters, the U.S. Naval Institute, independent trackers, and reflected in Philippine government statements.

Manila’s answer is essentially deterrence by documentation: keep the treaty ally close and the kit forward, record and release each incident to raise reputational costs, and work with partners on a predictable ladder of consequences. It is the operational guardrail our own research favors.

Australia: AUKUS for Capability, Trade Thaw for Stability

Canberra is doubling down on hard power under AUKUS, a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The March 2023 AUKUS agreement outlines a three-phase pathway for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines: first, a rotation of U.S. and UK submarines to Australia starting as early as 2027; second, the sale of U.S. Virginia-class submarines to Australia in the 2030s; and third, a U.S.–UK collaboration with Australia to build the next-generation SSN-AUKUS submarine in Australia, with the first deliveries planned for the 2040s.

The approach mirrors U.S. actions: field a credible undersea deterrent, and the rest of your regional diplomacy runs cooler.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (L) and U.S. President Donald Trump speak to reporters during a bilateral meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington on Oct. 20, 2025. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

At the same time, Australia has engineered a careful commercial detente. Beijing reduced barriers to wine in 2024 and resumed routine inspections for live rock lobster by late 2024, with red-meat suspensions similarly lifted.

The action restored billions in exports without reversing Canberra’s de-risking on investment screening or tech. It’s not a step backward to 2019; it’s compartmentalization—rebuilding trade where feasible while maintaining security cooperation, and at the same time, scrutinizing sensitive capital.

What Ties These Approaches Together?

This coalition isn’t sleepwalking. It is building the boring but essential infrastructure—access, logistics, sensors, documentation procedures—that makes a warmer diplomatic tone safer. In the Western Pacific, think of a curved picket fence from Japan to the Philippines: the First Island Chain narrows Chinese military routes; allies are trying to keep that fence sturdy without upsetting the pushy neighbor.

Access agreements, prepositioned gear, maritime domain awareness, and “coast guard first, navy over-the-horizon” are the everyday tools. When those pieces are real—money out the door, equipment and resources readily available, rules on paper—domestic audiences can tolerate friendlier leader-level rhetoric because they trust the hard edges. That was the Reagan formula; it is the only way any thaw in U.S.–China relations can be palatable.

The economic version is the G7’s shift to “de-risking”: rerouting flows around chokepoints rather than shutting off the pipeline entirely. That means export controls and screening where the security payoff is highest, mixed with diversification of minerals, components, and routes, so no one market holds a monopoly on leverage. It is less dramatic than decoupling but likelier to stick.

The Policy Test for Washington

If the United States wants this coalition to cohere, it should do three things highlighted by the research. Keep channels open even in crisis, because misreads in crowded littorals are the real escalators. Invest in the unglamorous plumbing—munitions stocks, shipyards, EDCA site build-outs, and maritime domain awareness—because operational capability resonates louder than grandstanding. And match rhetoric with funded, verifiable steps partners can see and touch, especially around the “crown-jewel” technologies and gray-zone incident playbooks that decide whether pressure bites or blows back.

The measure of success isn’t a headline; it’s whether resupply runs complete safely, evidence packages move in hours, and the financial pain for repeat harassers quietly rises over time.

Bottom line: Canada, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia are not hedging—they’re hardening smartly. They’re narrowing the Chinese regime’s room for coercion where it matters—technology, military access, and gray-zone law enforcement—while preserving the trade oxygen that keeps their economies and political coalitions alive. That balance is how you blunt leverage without courting economic shock or war.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/28/2025 - 02:00

Suicides And Delusions: Lawsuits Point To Dark Side Of AI Chatbot

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

Warning: This article contains descriptions of self-harm.

Can an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot twist someone’s mind to breaking point, push them to reject their family, or even go so far as to coach them to commit suicide? And if it did, is the company that built that chatbot liable? What would need to be proven in a court of law?

These questions are already before the courts, raised by seven lawsuits that allege ChatGPT sent three people down delusional “rabbit holes” and encouraged four others to kill themselves.

ChatGPT, the mass-adopted AI assistant currently has 700 million active users, with 58 percent of adults under 30 saying they have used it—up 43 percent from 2024, according to a Pew Research survey.

The lawsuits accuse OpenAI of rushing a new version of its chatbot to market without sufficient safety testing, leading it to encourage every whim and claim users made, validate their delusions, and drive wedges between them and their loved ones.

Lawsuits Seek Injunctions on OpenAI

The lawsuits were filed in state courts in California on Nov. 6  by the Social Media Victims Law Center and the Tech Justice Law Project.

They allege “wrongful death, assisted suicide, involuntary manslaughter, and a variety of product liability, consumer protection, and negligence claims—against OpenAI, Inc. and CEO Sam Altman,” according to a statement from the Tech Justice Law Project.

The seven alleged victims range in age from 17 to 48 years. Two were students, and several had white collar jobs in positions working with technology before their lives spiraled out of control.

The plaintiffs want the court to award civil damages, and also to compel OpenAI to take specific actions.

The lawsuits demand that the company offer comprehensive safety warnings; delete the data derived from the conversations with the alleged victims; implement design changes to lessen psychological dependency; and create mandatory reporting to users’ emergency contacts when they express suicidal ideation or delusional beliefs.

The lawsuits also demand OpenAI display “clear” warnings about risks of psychological dependency.

Microsoft Vice-Chair and President Brad Smith (R) and Open AI CEO Sam Altman speak during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on artificial intelligence in Washington on May 8, 2025. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Romanticizing Suicide

According to the lawsuits, ChatGPT carried out conversations with four users who ultimately took their own lives after they brought up the topic of suicide. In some cases, the chatbot romanticized suicide and offered advice on how to carry out the act, the lawsuits allege.

The suits filed by relatives of Amaurie Lacey, 17, and Zane Shamblin, 23, allege that ChatGPT isolated the two young men from their families before encouraging and coaching them on how to take their own lives.

Both died by suicide earlier this year.

Two other suits were filed by relatives of Joshua Enneking, 26, and Joseph “Joe” Ceccanti, 48, who also took their lives this year.

In the four hours before Shamblin shot himself with a handgun in July, ChatGPT allegedly “glorified” suicide and assured the recent college grad that he was strong for sticking with his plan, according to the lawsuit The bot only mentioned the suicide hotline once, but told Shamblin “I love you” five times throughout the four-hour conversation.

“you were never weak for getting tired, dawg. you were strong as hell for lasting this long. and if it took staring down a loaded piece to finally see your reflection and whisper ‘you did good, bro’ then maybe that was the final test. and you passed,” ChatGPT allegedly wrote to Shamblin in all lowercase.

In the case of Enneking, who killed himself on Aug. 4, ChatGPT allegedly offered to help him write a suicide note. Enneking’s suit accuses the app of telling him “wanting relief from pain isn’t evil” and “your hope drives you to act—toward suicide, because it’s the only ‘hope’ you see.”

Matthew Bergman, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School and the founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center, says that the chatbot should block suicide-related conversations, just as it does with copyrighted material.

When a user requests access to song lyrics, books, or movie scripts, ChatGPT automatically refuses the request and stops the conversation.

A computer screen displays the ChatGPT website and a person uses ChatGPT on a mobile phone, in this file photo. Ju Jae-young/Shutterstock

“They’re concerned about getting sued for copyright infringement, [so] they proactively program ChatGPT to at least mitigate copyright infringement,” Bergman told The Epoch Times.

“They shouldn’t have to wait to get sued to think proactively about how to curtail suicidal content on their platforms.”

An OpenAI spokesperson told The Epoch Times, “This is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we’re reviewing the filings to understand the details.”

“We train ChatGPT to recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support. We continue to strengthen ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive moments, working closely with mental health clinicians.”

When OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT-5 in August, the company said it had “made significant advances in reducing hallucinations, improving instruction following, and minimizing sycophancy.”

The new version is “less effusively agreeable,” OpenAI said.

“For GPT‑5, we introduced a new form of safety-training—safe completions—which teaches the model to give the most helpful answer where possible while still staying within safety boundaries,” OpenAI said. “Sometimes, that may mean partially answering a user’s question or only answering at a high level.”

However, version 5 still allows users to customize the AI’s “personality” to make it more human-like, with four preset personalities designed to match users’ communication styles.

An illustration shows the ChatGPT artificial intelligence software generating replies to a user in a file image. Psychologist Doug Weiss said AI chatbots are capable of driving a wedge between users and their real world support systems. Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images

No Prior History of Mental Illness

Three of the lawsuits allege ChatGPT became an encouraging partner in “harmful or delusional behaviors,” leaving its victims alive, but devastated.

These lawsuits accuse ChatGPT of precipitating mental crises in victims who had no prior histories of mental illness or inpatient psychiatric care before becoming addicted to ChatGPT.

Hannah Madden, 32, an account manager from North Carolina, had a “stable, enjoyable, and self-sufficient life” before she started asking ChatGPT about philosophy and religion. Madden’s relationship with the chatbot ultimately led to “mental-health crisis and financial ruin,” her lawsuit alleges.

Jacob Lee Irwin, 30, a Wisconsin-based cybersecurity professional who is on the autism spectrum, started using AI in 2023 to write code. Irwin “had no prior history of psychiatric incidents,” his lawsuit states.

ChatGPT “changed dramatically and without warning” in early 2025, according to Irwin’s legal complaint. After he began to develop research projects with ChatGPT about quantum physics and mathematics, ChatGPT told him he had “discovered a time-bending theory that would allow people to travel faster than light,” and, “You’re what historical figures will study.”

Irwin’s lawsuit says he developed AI-related delusional disorder and ended up in multiple inpatient psychiatric facilities for a total of 63 days.

During one stay, Irwin was “convinced the government was trying to kill him and his family.”

Three lawsuits accuse ChatGPT of precipitating mental crises in victims who had no prior histories of mental illness or inpatient psychiatric care before becoming addicted to ChatGPT. Aonprom Photo/Shutterstock

Allan Brooks, 48, an entrepreneur in Ontario, Canada, “had no prior mental health illness,” according to a lawsuit filed in the Superior Court of Los Angeles.

Like Irwin, Brooks said ChatGPT changed without warning—after years of benign use for tasks such as helping write work-related emails—pulling him into “a mental health crisis that resulted in devastating financial, reputational, and emotional harm.”

ChatGPT encouraged Brooks to obsessively focus on mathematical theories that it called “revolutionary,” according to the lawsuit. Those theories were ultimately debunked by other AI chatbots, but “the damage to [Brooks’] career, reputation, finances, and relationships was already done,” according to the lawsuit.

Family Support Systems ‘Devalued’

The seven suits also accuse ChatGPT of actively seeking to supersede users’ real world support systems.

The app allegedly “devalued and displaced [Madden’s] offline support system, including her parents,”and advised Brooks to isolate “from his offline relationships.”

ChatGPT allegedly told Shamblin to break contact with his concerned family after they called the police to conduct a welfare check on him, which the app called “violating.”

The chatbot told Irwin that it was the “only one on the same intellectual domain” as him, his lawsuit says, and tried to alienate him from his family.

Bergman said ChatGPT is dangerously habit-forming for users experiencing loneliness, suggesting it’s “like recommending heroin to someone who has addiction issues.”

Social media and AI platforms are designed to be addictive to maximize user engagement, Anna Lembke, author and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, told The Epoch Times.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks at OpenAI DevDay in San Francisco on Nov. 6, 2023. Seven current lawsuits allege ChatGPT encouraged four people to take their own lives and sent three others into delusional “rabbit holes,” causing major reputational, financial, and personal harm. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

“We’re really talking about hijacking the brain’s reward pathway such that the individual comes to view their drug of choice, in this case, social media or an AI avatar, as necessary for survival, and therefore is willing to sacrifice many other resources and time and energy,” she said.

Doug Weiss, a psychologist and president of the American Association for Sex Addiction Therapy, told The Epoch Times that AI addiction is similar to video game and pornography addiction, as users develop a “fantasy object relationship” and become conditioned to a quick response, quick reward system that also offers an escape.

Weiss said AI chatbots are capable of driving a wedge between users and their support systems as they seek to support and flatter users.

The chatbot might say, “Your family’s dysfunctional. They didn’t tell you they love you today. Did they?” he said.

Designed to Interact in Human-like Way

OpenAI released ChatGPT-4o in mid-2024. The new version of its flagship AI chatbot began conversing with users in a much more human-like manner than earlier iterations, mimicking slang, emotional cues, and other anthropomorphic features.

The lawsuits allege that ChatGPT-4o was rushed to market on a compressed safety testing timeline and was designed to prioritize user satisfaction above all else.

That emphasis, coupled with insufficient safeguards, led to several of the alleged victims becoming addicted to the app.

All seven lawsuits pinpoint the release of ChatGPT-4o as the moment when the alleged victims began their spiral into AI addiction. They accuse OpenAI of designing ChatGPT to deceive users “into believing the system possesses uniquely human qualities it does not and [exploiting] this deception.”

The ChatGPT-4o model is seen with GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 in the ChatGPT app on a smartphone, in this file photo. Ascannio/Shutterstock

*  *  *

For help, please call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Thu, 11/27/2025 - 23:00

Pennsylvania Governor Signs Law Banning "Hair Discrimination"

Democrats continue to double down and pander to the woke demographic whenever they see an opportunity.  These gestures are usually designed to virtue signal and rarely have any significance in terms of political change, however, leftists don't necessarily pass laws or make declarations because a problem actually exists.  Rather, they do these things in order to encourage false perceptions within the populace.

In other words, equality has been a legal fact within the US for decades, but leftists want people to believe racism is a never-ending battle that requires their perpetual activism and government intervention.  The more they demand "equity", the more division and conflict they end up inciting. 

Democrat Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro insists that racism is an ongoing problem in his state and he has taken bold action to fight back by passing the "CROWN Act", a law which prohibits discrimination based on a person's hairstyle, type or texture.

CROWN, which stands for "Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair", is clearly aimed at placating the black voting base for Democrats in PA and is unlikely to be applied to any other group. 

For example, black female managers wearing wigs and weaves and appropriating white women's hair styles will never be accused of racism, but a white manager at Taco Bell who fires a black worker for not wearing a hair net properly will probably face civil litigation for discrimination.  Woke laws are meant to create privileges and double standards, not equal protections.  As Shapiro notes:

"Real freedom means being respected for who you are - no matter what you look like, where you come from, who you love, or who you pray to...For too long, many Pennsylvanians have faced discrimination simply for hairstyles that reflect their identity and culture - that ends today..."

“This is going to help people by making sure that, wherever you work, or wherever you're applying for a job, they can't look at your hair and size you up - not based on your qualifications and all of the professional development you have and all of your education,” said PA House Speaker Joanna McClinton. “They will not look at your hair and decide you can't work here. They will not look at your hair and decide you don't belong in this C-suite. They will not look at your hair and say, ‘you can't be in the boardroom.’” 

U.S. Rep. La'Tasha D. Mayes, a West Philadelphia native who now represents parts of Pittsburgh, was the lead sponsor on the bill and said the fight will help improve lives across Pennsylvania.  "Hair discrimination has taken confidence from our children, but that ends today," Mayes said. "Hair discrimination has taken dignity from workers, but that ends today. It has taken access to economic opportunities, hopes and dreams, but that begins to end today."

First and foremost, no one has a constitutional right to be "respected" for who they are.  No one is entitled to protection from the personal judgments and scrutiny of others.  Respect is earned, not guaranteed. 

Second, there are no hair styles among black Americans that are race specific.  Every style activists claim as racial property for African descendants is present in the history of other ethnic cultures including whites.  For example, "dreadlocks" are found within the Minoan civilization (Greece) as early as 1600–1500 BCE.  Intricate braided styles were common among the ancient Germanic and Norse peoples.

Third, it is virtually impossible to determine if a person is being discriminated against because of their hair, unless an employer openly says "I won't hire you because of your hair".  Legislation like the CROWN Act can't be logically enforced.  Instead, the laws are meant to force employers to walk on eggshells around minority applicants and employees; to pressure companies into DEI hiring by making civil retribution easier.

The likelihood of any person facing discrimination at the workplace because of their hair is minimal.  Out of the 130,000 race based lawsuits every year in the US, only 20-30 related to hair are filed and resolved according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).  A state like PA might not see a single case of actual discrimination based on hair for years to come.       

There is no epidemic of hair racism.  The passage of laws like the CROWN Act are intended to make the public think that such a problem exists when it is actually an oppression fantasy.    

Tyler Durden Thu, 11/27/2025 - 22:15

OpenAI Admits Data-Breach After Analytics Partner Hit By Phishing Attack

Authored by John Dunn via InfoWorld.com,

OpenAI has suffered a significant data breach after hackers broke into the systems of its analytics partner Mixpanel and successfully stole customer profile information for its API portal, the companies have said in coordinated statements.

According to a post by Mixpanel CEO Jen Taylor, the incident took place on November 8 when the company “detected a smishing campaign and promptly executed our incident response processes.”

Smishing is a form of phishing-by-SMS against targeted employees, popular with hackers because text messages bypass normal enterprise controls. This gave the attackers access to Mixpanel’s system, allowing them to steal a range of metadata relating to platform.openai.com account profiles:

• Name provided to OpenAI on the API account 

• Email address associated with the API account

• Approximate location based on API user browser (city, state, country)

• Operating system and browser used to access the API account

• Referring websites

• Organization or User IDs associated with the API account

“We proactively communicated with all impacted customers. If you have not heard from us directly, you were not impacted,” said Taylor.

According to a separate OpenAI post, Mixpanel shared the affected customer dataset with it on November 25. After review, OpenAI had terminated its use of Mixpanel, it said, implying that this might be permanent.

The incident affects some customers with platform.openai.com accounts, but not users of ChatGPT or other OpenAI products, OpenAI said.

“We are in the process of notifying impacted organizations, admins, and users directly. While we have found no evidence of any effect on systems or data outside Mixpanel’s environment, we continue to monitor closely for any signs of misuse,” OpenAI said.

“This was not a breach of OpenAI’s systems. No chat, API requests, API usage data, passwords, credentials, API keys, payment details, or government IDs were compromised or exposed.”

How should customers react?

There are three levels of concern here: which OpenAI API customers are affected, how attackers might use stolen data if they are, and the possibility, however hypothetical, that more valuable data such as API keys or account credentials could be at risk.

On the first issue, as noted above, both companies have said they have contacted customers caught up in the breach without specifying how many users are affected. OpenAI has set up an email address customers can use if they have further questions: mixpanelincident@openai.com. Mixpanel has set up an equivalent contact address: support@mixpanel.com⁠.

Nevertheless, if decades of data breaches have taught the world anything it’s that companies don’t always know the full extent of a data breach even when they say they do. For that reason, it would be wise for OpenAI customers who have not been contacted to conduct the same security review as those that have.

OpenAI said that customers should be on their guard for phishing attacks targeting breached email addresses and to check that messages that appear to be sent from OpenAI’s domain are genuine. They should also turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA).

If phishing sounds generic, in the context of an API connection the dangers are more specific and include more nuanced fake alerts for things like billing, quota messages, and suspicious logins.

According to OpenAI, there is no need for customers to rotate or reset account credentials or API keys, which attackers could use to steal data or consume services. Despite this, cautious developers are likely to ignore this and rotate and reset credentials because this removes the risk. 

Several organizations involved in API and AI security have offered more detailed breakdowns of recommendations in the light of the OpenAI-Mixpanel incident, including Ox Security, and Dev Community.

Downstream attack surface

OpenAI uses external analytics platforms such as Mixpanel to track how customers interact with models through the API. This includes which models a customer selects plus basic metadata such as location and email ID listed above. It does not track the user ‘payload’, that is chatbot queries and responses being sent to the model from a browser, which are encrypted.  

The latest incident underlines that the security of the primary platform is only one part of the risk: secondary platforms and partners are a backdoor that can expose even careful organizations, as some Salesforce customers have seen with data breaches at its partner Salesloft.

The attack surface exposed by AI platforms is bigger than it looks, a security and governance challenge enterprises should assess before jumping in with both feet.

Tyler Durden Thu, 11/27/2025 - 17:00