US factory order data weak; US vehicle sales get FOMO boost; flooding hurts Beijing; inflation lingers in Australia raising questions for the RBA; UST 10yr at 4.19%; gold firms and oil slips; NZ$1 = 59 USc; TWI-5 = 67

There is no doubt that Trump has tossed a significant challenge to the big US corporations. there is an interesting article on CNN about Motorola trying to manufacture cell phones in the US, which failed; (https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/04/tech/smartphones-made-in-the-us-moto…) 

While reading this I wondered about how far the technology had shifted since then, not just in automation, but also manufacturing that could make such a venture more viable today? It's an interesting challenge that I'd bet many are digging into just to make themselves less reliant on and more competitive with the US. It will take time, and multiple international agreements, but I think it will happen. The shift in politics happening now is a signal that it will happen again in the future. Being able to survive these ructions will be the trick. 

Great article on AFR warning that most aussies already own to much of their assets in property and the ASX has 24% allocation to banks who are exposed to a falling property market…..

meanwhile Nz property his ready to launch say  nz me

i may watch the launch from a safe distance 

"China's biggest solar firms shed nearly one-third of their workforces last year, company filings show, as one of the industries hand-picked by Beijing to drive economic growth grapples with falling prices and steep losses.

The job cuts illustrate the pain from the vicious price wars being fought across Chinese industries, including solar and electric vehicles, as they grapple with overcapacity and tepid demand. The world produces twice as many solar panels each year as it uses, with most of them manufactured in China.

..."There's a lot of overcapacity in China, like steel, like cement, but you don't see any industry in the past having industry-wide cash loss for one and a half years already," Lau said.

Company-level losses are on the same scale as in real estate, another crisis-hit sector, even though solar is only about one-tenth the size, he said.

"This is highly unusual and highly abnormal."

https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/chinas-solar-giants-quie…

Awash with cash. How the investment world is feeding upon itself

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-05/stock-market-how-the-investment-…

I'm really enjoying the quality of the comments today !

Unregulated AI officially ended from Aug 1, 2025 and the EU AI Act's major compliance deadline has now passed: the rules for general-purpose AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are now in force across all EU member states. The debate about the EU being "anti-innovation" is another issue. It is what it is.



What has become became mandatory?



- All GPAI providers must register with the EU AI Office

-  Detailed documentation of training data required

- Risk assessments for "systemic risk" models

- Copyright compliance reporting

-  Transparency obligations for model capabilities



Violation of any rules are severe for non-compliance:

- OpenAI (2025 projected: $10B): $700 million fine

- Google/Alphabet (2024: $350B): $24.5 billion fine

- Meta (2024: $164.5B): $11.5 billion fine

I would like to get my hands on some dirty cheap green solar panels ,anyone know a dealer ?

The Russian Foreign Ministry statement concerning a moratorium on deploying ground-based intermediate  and shorter-range missiles. This is a very serious announcement.



https://globalsouth.co/2025/08/04/foreign-ministry-statement-concerning…



...quoted...



"The long and the short of this is that Russia does not feel itself bound any longer to maintain self-imposed restrictions on the deployment of intermediate and shorter-range missiles. This is what is called an arms race, and the result is that the world will bristle with missiles as Russia feels (rightly) that there is a direct and strategic threat to its security.



This is the correct decision to make for Russia, but unfortunately, it recognises and forces us to recognise that the world has been put back to an earlier state. In 1963, the Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed. One can reasonably argue that this is not an erstwhile nuclear arms race, but it won’t take long.

What can clearly be seen, though, is that it was never a case of being anti-USSR at the time because of communism, which is how the advertising went. It was as it is today, a hatred of Russia and now China, because the western forces cannot control the Russian or Chinese civilizational states, and the civilizational states will not pay fealty to the shining city upon the hill.



The INF treaty was signed between Gorbachef and Reagan in mid-1988, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996. While some countries joined NATO after World War II, the significant growth started after the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. On the dissolution of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, NATO was increased at least 10 times, with former Warsaw Pact countries joining.

While Russia needed to recognise the placement of intermediate and shorter-range missiles as a threat to its security and indeed its existence, it is nevertheless a sad day. Where are we? I would argue that humanity has taken a decided step back in the historical trajectory, and it does not paint a picture of Joy to the World."



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



I am not sure how many readers on this site realise yet that the developing global geopolitical tensions have grown into an existential threat to humanity.



Richard Werner has been very much in the news of late. I don't believe this is any coincidence - he knows we have a huge crisis on our hands, and this is why he has become more outspoken than ever. 



I am positive that Werner is painfully aware that right now there is an arc of more than 40 countries that begins in Scandanavia and the Baltic, runs down through Ukraine and the Black Sea, to the ME, with a branch into the African Continent, and then proceeds through Iran and the South Caucases, through Pakistan, India, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia, and then finally on up to Japan and the Kuril Islands.

IOWs, these are wars and potential hotspots that are being deliberately stirred up by the Western military establishment.

This arc surrounds both Russia and China, and the identical area that Mackinder referred to as ‘The World Island’ – and ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’.

The arc of wars and flashpoints is the same as his map, and it’s the same bunch of thieving warmongers plying their trade, just four generations on – the business of human butchery.

The only thing that has changed is the scale of the carnage.



Not good

Col