Lumber prices have become the world’s most improbable geopolitical barometer—a softwood seismograph that twitches every time a Canadian beetle sneezes or a Swedish forest decides to unionize. From Jakarta’s plywood mills to Oslo’s cross-laminated timber towers, the cost of two-by-fours is now quoted with the same reverence once reserved for crude oil and palladium futures….
A Parisian café, late evening: two diplomats from rival continents trade theories about whether the most seismic Anglo-American export since the Beatles is, in fact, a septuagenarian advice columnist from Indiana. “Carroll?” the French attaché shrugs, swirling Bordeaux. “She’s the reason my president now cites U.S. defamation law in campaign rallies. Mon Dieu, the reach…
The Kiss of Death, Californian Edition By Diego Valdez, Dave’s Locker Correspondent in Exile California, that sun-kissed land where avocados cost more than rent in Lisbon, has a new nightlife sensation: the “kissing bug.” Triatoma protracta—sounds like a Bond villain from Mérida—has decided that Los Angeles real estate is suddenly undervalued and is moving in….
Scorpio, the Moon is in your second house of money, whispering that your crypto wallet is about as stable as the Turkish lira on a particularly creative Monday. Roughly 2.1 billion people woke up this morning to find their preferred astrologer had already posted a pastel infographic promising “transformation,” “unexpected encounters,” or—if you live in…
FNMA Stock: A Global Ghost Story in Government Pajamas by Diego Márquez, Senior Correspondent, Somewhere Between Frankfurt and a Frequent-Flyer Lounge It’s 3 a.m. in Singapore. A Norwegian pension fund manager is refreshing her terminal, half-expecting the coffee to taste like solvent and half-hoping that FNMA—Fannie Mae to its drinking buddies—has finally decided whether it…
Broadcom’s Surge: How a Silicon-Valley Chipmaker Became the World’s Quiet Loan Shark By Our Man in Singapore, who has watched empires rise on smaller margins than Broadcom’s licensing fees. HONG KONG—While diplomats bicker over tariffs and TikTok, the real global power play is happening inside a beige box in San Jose. Broadcom Inc., the company…
S&P 500: The Planet’s Favourite Barometer of American Optimism—And Other Fairy Tales By the time the opening bell rings at 9:30 a.m. in New York, half the world has already gone to sleep clenching its jaw about what the S&P 500 might do. Tokyo fund managers are sipping canned coffee at 11:30 p.m. local time…
Indianapolis: A Flat, Friendly Fiefdom Where the World Quietly Reboots By our man in the corn belt, still wondering why every flight here lands next to a steakhouse Most foreigners can’t find Indianapolis on a map that already has a red “You-Are-Here” arrow pointing at it. That’s a pity, because the city is a low-stakes…
The World: A 24-Hour Spin Cycle on the Cosmic Laundromat by our roving correspondent, still waiting for his lost sock in the dryer of destiny Yesterday, at 2:17 p.m. GMT—give or take the eternal lateness of airline schedules—Planet Earth completed another smug lap around the sun. Somewhere between the Indian Ocean and a cloud of…
GOOGLE STOCK: THE WORLD’S FAVORITE DIGITAL LOTTERY TICKET An international dispatch from the frontlines of capitalism, where a search bar has become sovereign. Global markets woke up this week to discover that Alphabet—parent to Google, the search engine that taught us to ask questions we never wanted our mothers to hear—had added another 4% to…
The Great Global Pension Pick-Pocket By Our Man in Geneva, Nursing a Negroni and a Grudge GENEVA — Somewhere between the 12th refill of the UN cafeteria coffee urn and the 17th PowerPoint slide titled “Inter-generational Solidarity,” finance ministers from 40-odd countries reached a quiet consensus this week: retirement accounts are the new cookie jar,…
Zidane: The Last Time the World Agreed on Anything By Dave’s Locker International Desk The name “Zidane” still lands like a dropped glass in a quiet bar: sudden, sharp, and followed by the collective memory of spilled elegance. Seventeen years after Zinedine Zidane’s forehead introduced itself to Marco Materazzi’s sternum in Berlin, the incident remains…
