We got three electoral surprises Sunday, so let’s explore why each matters, starting in… Newish conservative PM Sanae Takaichi was always going to win, but she’s now got i) a standalone supermajority, after ii) Japan’s biggest single-party victory in post-war history. So… why does this matter? So… what next? Takaichi not only wants to continue […]

Italy’s Winter Olympics opening ceremony kicks off in just a few hours, meaning we’ll soon burn our evenings watching snowboarders called ‘Tanner’ and ‘Yui’ pull sick Frontside Double Cork 1080 Lien-to-Melon Reverts. But it also means that, as with any event bringing the world together, geopolitics is now in the air (doing a sick Frontside […]

Some 42 days after they were due, the US justice department finally shared the latest Epstein files on Friday, featuring three million pages, 180,000 images, and 2,000 videos. While it all pours more sordid pressure on familiar US figures (Trump, Clinton, Gates, Musk, Summers, Lutnick and beyond), it’s also reverberating around the world, starting in… […]

Any travel nerd will tell you the best time to fly is right after the holidays: lower prices, quieter lounges, fewer tantrums. World leader entourages are more likely to serve the tantrums than suffer them, but several are still travelling right now so let’s look at three:  China’s year of the fire horse involves a […]

US stocks and the US dollar plunged again on Monday after the president colourfully called on Jerome Powell, the Fed Chair, to cut rates.  Anyway, while this monetary soap opera plays out on the world stage, it’s reignited a debate that everyone thought was resolved decades ago: the notion that central banks must be independent from politics.  Why? The […]

We’ve been writing about bonds before they were the flavour of the week. And events now dictate that we revisit bonds again. Who are we to argue with events, dear Intriguer? Typically if US stocks tank, spooked investors will shift their cash over into bonds — the ultimate safe-haven. Why? When you buy bonds (loan the US government money), […]

Just after our last edition hit your inbox, Donald Trump decided to: Of course, markets breathed a semi-sigh of relief. But… did Trump blink? Here are the three main arguments you need to know: Treasury Secretary Bessent argues this was all part of Trump’s successful strategy, with 75 countries now reportedly lining up to negotiate […]

We’ve already explored Trump’s tariffs, but it’s worth a quick recap of his rationale before we tour today’s wild ripple effects: And while he’s now slapped tariffs on everyone (otherwise he says China just reroutes via third countries), the big kahuna tariffs are now really on China. Building on earlier tariff rounds during Trump 1.0 and Biden… The […]

You’d think 2026 already had enough on, but no — someone has gone out and helpfully coined an entirely new genre of Armageddon: not nuclear, not biblical, but supply chain: So what’s driving this impending RAMageddon? Intrigue’s hard-core nerds will forgive us when we casually split chips into three families: First there are the compute […]

While you might know beautiful Chile for its copper, its wines, its pisco-fight with Peru, or its ridiculously long and skinny profile like it’s spooning Argentina (nena, wake up), there’s now a new reason: Chile just launched Latin America’s own large language model.  Creatively named LatAm-GPT, the idea is to “develop capabilities in the region […]

For those who didn’t blow a decade learning Latin so you can use the Vatican’s famous Latin-language ATMs, pax means peace and silica is the mineral throughout the Earth’s crust, like sand — refine it enough and you get the foundation of modern tech: silicon. The State Department just launched Pax Silica as a US-led […]

Just days after Netflix announced its $83B offer for Hollywood’s legendary Warner Bros studio, rival Paramount has now entered the fray with its own hostile $108B bid.  And we haven’t seen a better love triangle since Edward and Jacob battled it out for Bella’s heart in the Twilight saga.  But the world is now watching […]