The European Central Bank says artificial intelligence investment, changing energy consumption and increased government spending have helped the eurozone withstand this year’s energy crisis, although economists warn that several sources of growth may prove temporary.

The eurozone economy has proved more resilient to the energy price shock of 2026 than economists initially expected, supported by increased investment in artificial intelligence, reduced dependence on fossil fuels and higher government expenditure, according to an assessment published by the European Central Bank on Wednesday, 21 October.

ECB economists Óscar Arce, Gerrit Koester and Beatrice Pierluigi found that structural changes in European energy consumption have reduced the economic consequences of rising oil and gas prices. Stronger international demand for technology equipment and additional public spending, particularly in Germany, have also supported growth.

The findings come as the ECB faces renewed inflationary pressure following disruption to global energy markets caused by the conflict involving Iran, raising questions about the outlook for interest rates and economic activity.

Eurozone growth withstands energy shock

In their assessment of the eurozone’s economic resilience, ECB economists reported that economic output continued to expand despite the sharp increase in energy prices earlier this year.

Excluding Ireland, where economic statistics are frequently affected by the activities of multinational companies, real eurozone GDP in the second quarter was 0.6 per cent above its level at the end of 2025.

The ECB also identified quarterly growth of approximately 0.3 per cent over the preceding four quarters, excluding Irish figures.

These results exceeded earlier expectations that the disruption to energy markets would have a greater impact on European manufacturing, consumer spending and business investment.

Nevertheless, the eurozone’s rate of expansion remains modest compared with its longer-term historical performance.

The ECB’s findings suggest that the economy has become better able to absorb international disruptions without experiencing the immediate contractions that might previously have followed comparable energy price increases.

Reduced reliance on imported oil and gas

One of the most significant structural changes concerns energy consumption.

According to the ECB, the eurozone economy is now approximately half as dependent on oil as it was during the early 1990s, measured against economic output.

Greater energy efficiency, the expansion of services and investment in alternative electricity generation have progressively reduced the amount of fossil fuel required to produce economic activity.

The growth of renewable energy has also altered the relationship between natural gas prices and electricity costs.

In Spain, the proportion of hours during which gas-fired power stations determined wholesale electricity prices fell from approximately 80 per cent in 2020 to just over 20 per cent during the first nine months of 2026.

France recorded a similar decline, from approximately 60 per cent to around 20 per cent, supported by its extensive nuclear generating capacity.

Consequently, increases in international gas prices are having a smaller effect on electricity markets in countries with substantial renewable or nuclear generation.

The ECB cautioned, however, that European economies remain exposed to global energy disruptions, particularly through industrial activity and international supply chains.

Artificial intelligence provides unexpected support

The international expansion of artificial intelligence has generated an additional source of demand for European manufacturers and technology companies.

Investment in computing infrastructure, digital services and specialised equipment has increased demand for products supplied by European businesses.

According to the ECB, global trade has performed considerably better than expected at the end of 2025.

The latest projections indicate international trade growth of approximately 4.7 per cent in 2026, compared with the 2 per cent forecast in December.

AI-related investment accounts for part of that improvement.

European manufacturers producing specialised machinery and technology equipment have benefited from increased export orders, while domestic investment in technology has supported economic activity.

However, the ECB found that the effects vary considerably between sectors.

Technology-equipment manufacturers recorded comparatively strong growth in output, employment and new orders.

Software companies performed better in output terms, but the improvement was less evident in employment and new business.

This uneven performance suggests that the economic benefits of the AI investment cycle are concentrated in particular industries.

German spending strengthens European demand

Fiscal policy has provided another source of support.

The ECB estimates that the expansionary fiscal stance in the eurozone has increased to approximately 0.5 percentage points of GDP, twice the level anticipated in December 2025.

Much of the additional stimulus reflects higher German government spending on defence and infrastructure.

Other eurozone governments have introduced measures to limit the effect of energy prices on households and businesses.

Public investment and expenditure have therefore helped compensate for weakness in areas affected by higher import costs and international uncertainty.

Yet the ECB warned that fiscal support cannot necessarily continue at its present level.

Several eurozone governments face borrowing constraints, while additional public spending can place pressure on national budgets.

Interest-rate decisions remain difficult

The ECB’s assessment comes amid expectations of further monetary tightening as policymakers respond to renewed energy-related inflation.

The central bank must consider whether higher energy costs will remain temporary or begin influencing wages, prices and inflation expectations more broadly.

Additional interest-rate increases could reduce inflationary pressures but would also raise borrowing costs for businesses, governments and households.

The economic recovery remains exposed to potential reversals in global demand, international trade and investment in artificial intelligence.

The ECB’s economists also identified geopolitical escalation and further supply-chain disruption as continuing risks.

Their findings indicate that reduced fossil-fuel dependence has made the eurozone less vulnerable to energy shocks, while technology investment and government spending have provided additional support.

Whether that resilience continues into 2027 will depend partly on the durability of international demand and the ability of European governments to maintain investment without increasing inflationary pressure.

Today's guest is Tarek Mansour, the 30-year-old billionaire co-founder and CEO of Kalshi, the prediction market platform where users can trade on the outcomes of everything from elections and economic forecasts to sporting events and the weather. As prediction markets surge in popularity, Kalshi is facing legal challenges from states that argue it's operating an illegal gambling business. But Mansour insists that prediction markets are fundamentally different from casinos and sportsbooks and that efforts to restrict them threaten a powerful new source of information about the future.

Nick Gillespie talks with Mansour about Kalshi's battles with state regulators, why he believes the gambling industry is trying to stifle competition, and how prediction markets can help businesses manage risk. Mansour explains why ordinary people can sometimes forecast economic trends more accurately than Wall Street professionals. They also discuss Mansour's journey from growing up in Lebanon to building a multibillion-dollar American company and his concerns about rising inequality and the declining enthusiasm for entrepreneurship. Mansour argues that capitalism needs to give more Americans a stake in its success without sacrificing the innovation that makes it possible.

 

0:00—How prediction markets differ from casinos

4:55—Do prediction markets serve a public good?

8:18—Markets, price discovery, and the economy

11:36—Why does Kalshi ban insider trading?

14:06—CFTC and federal regulation

17:26—How Kalshi differs from Polymarket

22:30—Do prediction markets have a corrosive effect?

25:03—Kalshi's ban on athlete harassment

26:49—Arizona and New York lawsuits

31:30—State versus federal regulation

33:45—Why is Kalshi exploding in popularity?

35:57—Mansour's background and the American Dream

39:55—Wealth gap narratives and an inclusive economy

42:39—Will a Democratic Congress hurt Kalshi?

45:17—Mansour's prediction for Kalshi

47:48—Will state lawsuits require a Supreme Court decision?

 

Producer: Paul Alexander

Director of Photography: Kevin Alexander

Camera Operator: Meagan O'Rourke

Audio Engineer: Ian Keyser

 

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

Nick Gillespie: This is The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie. I'm talking today with Tarek Mansour. He's the co-founder of Kalshi, the prediction market platform that allows people to win or lose money, or invest or not money, on everything from election results to weather outcomes to who will win Dancing With the Stars and, of course, all sorts of sports. Thank you so much, Tarek. 

Tarek Mansour: I'm excited. 

You're 30 years old, you're a billionaire, and you are a big believer in prediction markets as truth machines. I want to talk about that in a minute. But first, Kalshi gives money to a lot of nonprofits, including Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this podcast. There are no conditions on this interview.

Tell me first, what is a prediction market, in the simplest terms possible, and why is it different than a sportsbook?

I think a prediction market, in the simplest terms possible, it really is like the stock market. We're matching buyers and sellers in an open marketplace that is competitive. The thing that they're trading is not a small, specific subset that Johnny Wall Street cares about, whether it's a stock or a bond or a credit default swap or all these kinds of sophisticated things. It's simple questions about the future.

Right. So everything is yes or no?

And some things are actually more like, is it going to go up or down? And there are more structures now. But I think a prediction market is just a generalization of the stock market. One way to think about the stock market is actually a prediction market on the prices of stocks on companies.

And you make money not on whether or not you bet right or wrong. You're not the house. You run the platform, so it's like you own the casino. And you're not staking anything…

No, it's exactly the opposite. We're exactly like owning the stock market. We're like the New York Stock Exchange, right? The New York Stock Exchange is not in the business of pricing a stock or setting the prices. They're in the business of matching buyers and sellers.

And so you may have an opinion that something's going to happen, and somebody else may think that something is not going to happen. And we match the two of you to settle that disagreement of opinion via trade.

Historically, that's about stocks. Someone thinks Apple stock is going to be worth more than the current price, more than $100 per share, and someone thinks it's not actually going to be, that it's overpriced. They make a trade as a way to settle that difference of opinion.

The difference in a prediction market is you're doing it on whether Brexit is going to happen or not. And you may think that it's very likely that Brexit happens, and someone else, your counterparty, may think that it's not very likely it's going to happen.

And let's say the market right now is trading at a 40 percent chance, 40 cents on the dollar. You may want to buy, and the other person wants to sell, and we match the two of you. And I take 0.7 percent. So if you put in $100, the other person puts in $100, I take 70 cents.

And now, very quickly, explain why that's different from a sportsbook, like why you're not Fanduel….

Here's how I'll explain it, and I'll get back to exactly the sportsbook analogy.

So when the first version of financial markets came around, and very few people know this, people think that the first financial market was the stock market, but actually it wasn't. It was the commodities market.

The first real example of a financial market was the rice futures exchange in Japan. And then in the U.S., it's really become very popular at the end of the 19th century. It was farmers, they were trading on the price of grain using grain futures, and then over time, it evolved to oil futures, etc.

And at the time, it was really interesting because when I tell you about grain futures right now, you don't think gambling. You think boring, mainstream financial markets.

But at the time, the states were suing the Chicago Board of Trade, saying this is gambling. And what was the claim? It was saying, "Well, farmers are betting on the price of grain. They're speculating, and so it looks and feels like gambling. What's the difference?"

And at the time, they didn't have sportsbooks or casinos. They had the bucket shops, which were different from the Chicago Board of Trade.

So what were the bucket shops? A bucket shop was a place where the shop, which was functioning like a casino, set the prices. They would say, here's the price of grain, and here's what I'll let you buy, and here's what I'll let you sell.

And then the purpose was basically, it was a casino. Farmers would come in, bet against the bucket shop, and then they would lose money. And if you made a little bit, if you were a smart, sophisticated trader, they would ban you. You know, the card counters get banned from the casinos.

It continues to happen on sports betting.

In sportsbetting or casinos, right? Like, if you're a smart, sharp trader, you get limited. And if you maybe have some addiction issues or you lose consistently, you get promos, and you keep coming back. That is the gambling business model. That is the end.

And when people were claiming that the exchange was gambling, at the time, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Chicago Board of Trade.

And the basis was very simple. It's like, yes, some people are speculating, which looks and feels like betting, sure. But the mechanism is different, and there's a public good that comes out of it.

The mechanism is a free, neutral platform that lets people trade against each other. And what it needs and incentivizes, it incentivizes the card counters, the smart traders, because the public good that it brings is the informational knowledge that it gives to people.

Talk a bit about this, because this is key to your argument, and we'll get into the regulatory structures and the cases against you, but that prediction markets serve a public good because they give more information about what is likely to happen or how actors are going about their business. How does that happen?

In particular, at a place like Kalshi, you can bet on whether it's going to rain tomorrow or how much. How does that in any way create information that is useful?

Yep. So our weather forecast, so when people are trading on whether it's going to rain tomorrow or not, what happens is you get price discovery.

Some people think the odds of rain are a little bit higher than the market, so they buy it, which moves it a little up. And then some people think it's lower, and it moves it a little down. And that continuous thing is how a stock moves. That's why we call it price discovery.

Price discovery is essentially, there's a quote from a Supreme Court decision in 1905. It's really neat. It's like this idea that speculation is the self-adjustment of society to the probable.

Which is like it's the self-adjustment of the market, the wisdom of the crowds, to what we think is going to happen.

There were papers actually a week or two ago that compared our weather forecast, like the forecast from the prediction markets on the weather, to the most accurate national blended average of weather station forecasts, and we were 10 percent more accurate.

I mean, just very quickly, how does that happen? Because Joe Schmo betting on the weather, he doesn't have satellite information.

So let me give you a little bit of history.

Prediction markets, I think the founder of prediction markets is Friedrich Hayek, the economist. He used to call them information markets, not prediction markets.

And what was the sort of central thesis? At the time, he was saying we have a knowledge problem. The knowledge problem is that our decisions in society, whether it's D.C., whether it's executives, are centralized.

It's you and I sitting in a room and making a very critical decision about the future of the country. But the information that's relevant to that decision is actually very decentralized. It's sitting with a bunch of different people, hundreds of thousands, millions of people distributed across the board.

So we need a magnet. We need the mechanism to bring that information from everyone so we can make better decisions over time. 

That's what markets do. 

That's exactly what markets do. Market prices are a very good aggregator of information.

Ok, so then the idea is that somehow the people who are betting on the weather have some kind of meaningful knowledge that otherwise would not be—

And by the way, people are not even usually, for example, for the Senate race right now, they don't buy Democrat or Republican and then hold it till maturity. They buy if they think the price is underpriced, and they sell if it's overpriced. They're constantly trading these things.

But the key thing here, when I started the company in 2018, a few years before that, Philip Tetlock did…

At the University of Pennsylvania.

He's actually at MIT.

Oh, I'm sorry. Ok.

And it's about superforecasters. And the whole thing, he was trying to figure out the science of forecasting. What are these people who are good at forecasting?

And he pitted a bunch of elites on geopolitics, the big pundits, and he pit them against a bunch of random dudes, basically, and had them predict geopolitical events. And guess which group did better? The random dudes.

And it was amazing because it tells you a little bit that actually there is a lot of wisdom in this idea of the wisdom of the crowds. The average people, if you add them all up, and all their bits and pieces of information, you end up getting a way better solution and result than the small group of elites.

And this gets reflected, I mean, the way Hayek talks about it in "The Use of Knowledge in Society" and throughout all Austrian school of economics, is markets and prices are discovery systems that transmit information.

That's exactly what it is.

And prediction markets are like transmitting information about a much broader… We used to care about— farmers used to care about what the price of grain is going to be. Why?

And I go back to the farmer. Imagine we had banned grain futures as gambling at the time. There's a very clear net impact on society today, which would be what? Why would it be important?

That price discovery that was happening was giving the farmer predictability on what the price is going to be of grain in September. So now I'm in March, I know how much I can invest, how much I can plant.

If you take that away from them, what would they do? They would plant less. They would just, because with less predictability, you can invest less. And so actually, our food supply would go down. That's how critical grain futures are.

So that makes total sense. And then just to press on this a little bit, as a libertarian, I like markets and everything. I like prediction markets, etc. But what is the positive social externality, other than people being able to express themselves or entertain themselves, with like betting on Dancing With the Stars?

Well, I think to me, some people may disagree on the lines, but a lot of people care about that. And I'll give you a lot of examples.

At a high level, it seems like we agree with the premise that getting smarter, even if it's a little smarter, about what's going to happen will enable us to make better decisions and allocate resources more effectively and manage risk more effectively, right?

Now, what's interesting is actually I always think of this as like, you want more markets on more things because like—

It's more information.

It's more information. It's just that simple.

And I'll give you an example. This was the same argument that was made. So there were two types of commodity derivatives that were banned. Onion futures, which I can tell you the story, there was a wild story.

The second one is box office futures. Box office futures, in 2010, there was an exchange that was trying to bring them to light, which is an idea to do price discovery on how successful a movie is going to be beforehand.

Guess who killed it? 

I'm assuming the movie companies. 

 

The big ones. Why? Because they wanted less information. And the argument was at the time, well, it's frivolous. What is the purpose of knowing if a movie is going to be successful? It's a frivolous thing…

And this is called a Keynesian beauty contest or something, where you're betting on what you think other people will say is going to happen or something.

Yeah, I mean, but in this specific one, it's more like they were saying, "Look, knowing if this movie is going to be successful or not, that seems frivolous. It's not like grain futures. We should ban it."

But they actually had an ulterior motive, and there's a reason they did not want price discovery, for two reasons.

Because one, if the market can predict ahead of time how successful a movie is going to be, it'll be harder for them to juice the three or four weeks of box office they get in a bad movie before the word gets out. And there was a second reason. If you have a market that will tell you upfront, actually, "This team is doing a good job, even though it's a small team with a smaller brand," you may attract more investment to the smaller studios, which was going to bring more competition to the space. You will get more efficient….

I mean, markets are democratizing, ultimately, or they push against centralization.

More information is always better, and oftentimes monopolies and incumbents want less information because, you know, the markets usually reduce…

Well now let me… I want to get to the regulatory structure you're currently under, plus what various states are trying to fit you into, a different kind of regulatory structure. But just on this moment, let's stop for a second.

If more information is always better, why do you ban insider trading? Because there is an argument that insider trading is absolutely the best information, and it changes prices very quickly and makes markets clear more—

And libertarians, that's the argument, and the free market side of me always tells you that you want more. You want as much as possible.

And you want, like, when Practical Magic 2 is coming out, you want people in the studio who have seen it, who know it sucks, to change, you know, to…

I would argue yes, in theory. I'll say where in practice.

But maybe right before, I want to just make, because you asked me about the gambling distinction, which we'll get to with insider trading.

The gambling business model is one where the thing they incentivize for their customers is fun and entertainment and to keep losing. That's why they give you the suites and the drinks, and they keep you losing.

Prediction markets, what they incentivize is going out there, like markets, seek knowledge, seek truth, and then come to get rewarded for it in the open market. That is why there is a fundamental difference.

And it doesn't matter what the topic is. It could be grain futures. It could be weather. It could be economics. It could be sports. It doesn't really matter. The structure, the former structure, is what really matters.

Now, on the other argument, I agree with you. It's like, well, the insiders, should they be allowed to trade? And the way I always answer the question is, why is insider trading banned in the stock market? Because in theory, we would get more accurate prices in the stock market.

And there's a very practical reason, and this is how markets should be regulated. And I strongly believe that. That's why we took a pro-regulatory-first approach to this.

Because markets can only exist if there are fair rules of the road and the competition is fair and equitable across all the participants. So I think actually…

And people need to believe that the market are not…

Otherwise, they stop trading.

Free markets, in my view, if you take the opposite of free markets, it's this idea that there's a privileged, closed circle that has access to specialized information. Right? And the key thing in the line I was drawing is, if the information is something you can access by doing research and work and putting in the effort, no matter who you are, then it's fair game.

But if it's information that you only will have privileged access to because, I don't know, you work in government or you're an executive at a team, then it's unfair. Then it creates an unfair dynamic that over time dries up liquidity and makes actually the market less efficient because nobody will trade. People won't trade.

So this helps explain, you noted you co-founded Kalshi in 2018. You went to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to get licensed and regulated at the federal level. So when people say, "Oh, you guys are completely unregulated," that isn't accurate. But you're…

It's completely inaccurate.

Yeah. How does the CFTC regulate what you do? And then we'll get into how and why states might be trying to change that.

Yeah, I mean, I think they're two entirely different… There's a reason why the states are trying to change that, and we'll talk about that. It's fundamental protectionism.

So the beauty of the Commodity Exchange Act, why did it come? It actually got created after this whole fight that the Chicago Board of Trade was having with the states. And Congress, in '74, enacted the Commodity Exchange Act to actually preempt two types of laws: state insurance laws and state gaming laws.

And there's a reason why. Because on an open exchange, in grain futures or on Kalshi, there are two types of activity: speculation, which looks and feels like gambling, or hedging, which looks and feels like insurance.

The difference between those two is they're being done on an open market.

And why do you need the federal statute? Why didn't they let the Chicago Board of Trade be done state by state? It's because it didn't work. And here's the easiest way to explain it. Imagine we siloed the New York Stock Exchange, the stock market, state by state, where in New York, you can only buy Apple stock from New Yorkers.

Imagine we had 50 different New York stock exchanges, different prices, different rules, fragmented liquidity.

What would happen? Worse prices, a bunch of deadweight loss, lower liquidity. You probably won't be able to, if you're in Kansas, you won't be able to buy as much stock as you want.

It is a completely anti-market kind of structure.

What you want is a federal, uniform set of rules that apply across all 50 states that promote and foster this sort of multilateral, peer-to-peer idea. Someone in California is trading with someone in Texas, and you want as much information as possible. You don't want to silo information. That's the anti-market view.

And what does regulation mean, and why is it important for us, first, for us to really get regulated as commodities? It's because the rules that apply to trading on oil futures or interest rate swaps or politics on Kalshi are largely the same.

So what do you want to prevent against? You want to prevent against insider trading, prevent against market manipulation, so doing things that move the market price unnaturally for profit. You want to add sensible guardrails around knowing who your customers are and money laundering and that sort of thing.

And I believe in this, and I think this is where the regulation is very important. It's like all these products, whether it's grain futures or sports betting or prediction markets or trading options on Robinhood, most of the use is fine.

And it's not about people winning or losing. I think the competition, some people are going to win, some people lose.

But there's some degree of irresponsible use. I do believe in that. And I believe in individual freedom. People should be able to choose, but I think there should be some regulations on irresponsible use so that companies are not targeting those types of behavior.

The sportsbooks constantly target those types of…

Yeah, so let's just, real quickly, how do you guard against insider trading? I mean, you ban it, but how do you know whether insider trading is happening? How do you know whether or not somebody who has a problem is continuing to use Kalshi? How do you find out?

Yeah, so insider trading, I mean, it's the ever question for a stock market. How do you know? And it's largely a very similar mechanism.

So one, you have to verify all customers. It's like onboarding onto Schwab, opening a brokerage account. You have to…

Are you covered by know-your-customer rules?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. As a regulator. 

And that is distinct from something like Polymarket, which is based offshore, and they're struggling with the idea that there may have been a member of the U.S. military who bet on Maduro being removed because he was part of the operation, which is kind of a classic case of insider trading.

It certainly is insider trading, for sure.

Because insider trading is like, are you trading on material nonpublic information? So do you have a piece of information that you're not supposed to disclose legally? And trading is a form of disclosure. You can't go say it, so you…

Ok, so you follow KYC, but then, yeah, and then how? So how do you…?

And then you have the same systems as the New York Stock Exchange, which basically flag suspicious patterns.

I mean, insider trading or market manipulation, the patterns are always weird. You always have an account that is trading hundreds of dollars, and now they're trading thousands of dollars all of a sudden on an asymmetric shot. What's happening, right?

And the last piece is you enforce. So when you find someone, we have, as a self-regulatory organization, we can impose fines all the way to referrals for criminal prosecution.

And the last piece that's so interesting about the prediction market, so I think it's even unique compared to some of the financial markets, all of our trades are public. It's all fully transparent.

So our customers, because why is insider trading bad? There's someone who gets harmed when someone commits insider trading. It's the person on the other side. That person is extremely incentivized to whistleblow, usually.

And so, George Santos basically tried to commit insider trading on Kalshi a few months ago. We had 100 whistleblower complaints within a few minutes because traders immediately tell us, "Oh, this is weird," and they can all see it publicly.

And that's actually kind of a curse because the press talks about insider trading cases on prediction markets all day because they're so easy to flag.

That's actually a blessing, if you really think about it, because it's so obvious. It's so clear.

So let's talk about…

You're committing a crime in broad daylight, right?

Yeah. So the state of Arizona, I mean, there's about 20 jurisdictions, I guess states, also some Indian tribes and things like that, that are bringing suits against Kalshi.

Arizona, earlier this year, launched a criminal indictment that you're running an illegal gambling operation. New York state, we're talking in New York, and you guys are headquartered in New York, right? It's saying that you are basically, I guess it's not a criminal indictment, but they think you owe them billions of dollars because you're essentially a gambling operation.

What do they get wrong? And what do they get wrong about your structure?

I mean, let me read to you something that I've sort of been looking at recently that I've been sort of really into.

I'll read you one of the court opinions, and here's how it sort of goes:

"We are clearly of opinion that dealing in these markets is void by the common law, for, among other reasons, that it is contrary to public policy. It is not only contrary to public policy, but it is a crime. A crime against the state, a crime against the general welfare and happiness of the people, a crime of religion and morality, and a crime against all legitimate trade and business. This species of gambling has become emphatically and pre-eminently the national sin. In its proportion and extent, it is immeasurable."

And they go on and on about how horrible this activity is.

This is the Illinois Supreme Court. It is from actually 1888. And it's about grain futures, not prediction markets.

And I think the same thing is playing out.

And is this simply, I mean…

It really is as simple because we have the same structure.

And the topic never mattered under the federal law. But states misunderstood it, and they just looked at grain futures at the time as like… Because people don't understand markets. Markets have always been something that people… 

They're counterintuitive.

And I always think, imagine we had banned grain futures back in the day. We would have ruinous consequences. It's today one of the bedrocks of the U.S. economy. We would not be able to function without grain futures.

And everybody benefits. I mean, there are individual winners and losers, but you get a more stable supply of food, better planting, better forecasting.

I think about 100 years from now, when there's going to be the next generation of entrepreneurs coming around and expanding the universe, they're going to be looking at this and thinking, "Imagine we didn't have a good gauge on where elections are going to land, on where geopolitics are going, the weather, the climate, the hurricanes."

And you're starting to see today, our fastest-growing segment is actually businesses hedging on Kalshi.

How do they do that? 

You can take a position because you want to make money, speculate, but a lot of people take positions because they want to reduce their risk toward an event.

So the same way that grain farmers would short the price of grain so that if the price of grain goes down in six months, they would offset their revenue loss, we see a lot of businesses do the same.

So one example, we have now hundreds of businesses that do the same, it's like sports bars hedge against their home team losing every game.

Why? Because if the team wins tonight, I will make $2,000 in revenue. If it loses, I'll make $800 in sales. And my cost is the same because I have to stock up on inventory. So it's $1,200, $1,200 no matter what.

So when the Knicks win tonight, I make $800. The Knicks lose tonight, I lose $400.

Unpredictability like that is very bad for small businesses. So they buy no on the Knicks. So they short the Knicks winning in a way that essentially compensates their P&L so they're up $300 no matter what.

And why is that important? Because predictability, it's a bit like how the airlines hedge their price fluctuations, predictability helps with investment, helps them make their decisions.

Quick question before we get to why the states are bringing these suits the way they are. Does the financialization, or does the prediction marketizing of everything, does that have a corrosive effect, say, on sports?

In leagues, and this goes back to the 1919 World Series in Chicago, the Chicago White Sox famously had some players who threw it. But when everything is being bet on, everything is being speculated, does that end up undermining something fundamental? 

So one, it shouldn't be everything. Two, I just want to be clear, we are not adding anything to sports. Sportsbooks have existed, like DraftKings and FanDuel, and if you see all the cases of players doing bad things, they're actually on the sportsbooks.

Can I ask what percentage of your revenue, or…?

I mean, it's like 65, 70 percent now, but it's going down. So it was 96 percent nine months ago. So it's going down very quickly because sports is a great way to educate people about probability. They get it. It's Moneyball. Our customer is the Moneyball type.

And then over time, they do politics and economics, and everything else is growing.

But I want to make a key point about this, which is very important. The notion that prediction markets all of a sudden now allow people to bet or trade on sports, it exists already. The question is, do you prefer it in an open and fair marketplace where everything is transparent, or do you prefer it in a closed marketplace where everything is opaque? That is the question.

And then I'm a pro-regulation guy, so I think there's war, terrorism, assassination, violence, wildfires, things that create moral hazards, that should not be traded on. We should not have markets on those things because the incentive is, it's too easy to go and create a fire.

But we also, as a market, we don't go… Most of the issues that you see is things…So we have standards that are more strict than the states' gambling rules around things not being very easily manipulated in the Commodity Exchange Act.

So we don't, for example, do markets on whether the next play is going to be a ball or a strike. The sportsbooks do these, and that's actually the vast majority of cheating cases, etc.

And that's also why we believe that regulation is very important, because when you set the right guardrails on what markets should be in, what markets should not be in, and how do you police those types of activities, and when you find someone that does it, how do you punish them very heavily? The last thing I'll say is we actually ban athletes from trading on anything that relates to their leagues.

I'm sorry, anything at all, or just on…?

Anything in their leagues. Yeah, the same way we ban politicians or members of Congress from trading on things that relate to Congress.

Yeah.

All of that goes into our…

That's like the only place where Congressmen can't bet on what they're about to legislate. 

They can do it on the stock market, but not on Kalshi.

Kalshi was a sponsor of the U.S. Open, which is kind of interesting, and there's a growing acceptability. 

And the NHL and MLB, and you're going to see a lot of other leagues.

But you've also recently you said that you are going to limit people who are abusive toward sports figures.

Yes.

Explain that, because now are you saying, as a condition of entering contracts on Kalshi, you're going to limit the speech of people? Or how does that work?

That's a great question. I mean, look, I think there are certain bad cases where, and by the way, it's not just about sports. It exists in really anything.

But I think the idea that someone… We always want to be careful about regulating the bad behaviors out of the system. And I believe that. I'm a very free markets guy, but I do believe in sensible guardrails. I do. And we may disagree on that point.

My view is the highway should be wide enough for people to compete and thrive and do all the great things you're going to do. You have to have a fence at the end of the highway to make sure people are not driving themselves off the cliff.

And I think it needs to be very delicate and needs to be very careful. You don't want to make the highway one car at a time because that's terrible. And so in this specific case, you have issues sometimes where people get over their skis and they go and harass…

Yeah, I mean, if you lose $2,000 or $10,000 or $200 because somebody dumps the fifth set at the U.S. Open, you're probably going to yell at the person who lost.

Yeah, yelling is one thing. Harassing and following them online and doing all the weird stuff that sometimes… And by the way, we haven't seen any evidence of that happening on Kalshi. That has historically happened on the online sportsbooks and some of the other mechanisms. I just want to be ahead of it. I don't like that idea.

Ok, so then here, is there any… When the state of Arizona says, "Ok, you're like a gambling operation, you're like the Mafia coming in and you're running this billions of dollars," New York is doing something similar.

In New York state, I think on a typical sportsbook, they take 51 percent of gross revenue. They make a lot of money by taxing and regulating this, and obviously they want money from you. Is there any other reason that they're doing this?

The casino lobby. I mean, the casino lobby is… The foundational thing is a few things.

So when an incumbent gets threatened competitively from a challenger, what does the incumbent usually do?

Go to the government.

It's litigate, then legislate, and then finally, when you realize that this is here to stay, you innovate, right? That's the basic 101. It's always been par for the course.

And why? Because incumbents, inevitably, when you get big enough, you want less competition. That's what you really want. And that's what's been playing out here.

And by the way, it's not just about sports. We launched perpetual futures recently, and CME, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Board of Trade, sued us over it.

And usually the policy argument is never, "I'm losing some revenue due to competition." It's like you come up with a bunch of reasons, like, "Oh, it's too risky. It's too whatever," so they can get policymakers riled up.

And they usually have very orchestrated lobbies and comms functions that do these sorts of things.

But if we look at it foundationally, first, it's interesting. We have zero evidence of cannibalization between what we are doing and the gaming companies, but also the sportsbooks. Why? Because my core customer is a trader. It's the guy who has 17 monitors and like is doing math and stats, and that's 70, 80 percent of my volume. That person is banned in the sports world.

Ok, yeah.

Right? Because they're making money.

I mean, so do you think people are using Kalshi to make money, or is it a form of entertainment? Because casinos and sports betting is really entertainment…

Do you think some people use options in the stock market as a form of entertainment, like on Robinhood?

Yeah, I suspect that.

I mean, on Robinhood, for sure.

But there's a great, actually from Illinois, that was more recent actually, like a week or two ago, which is saying that just because something— financial, these prediction markets are swaps, they're financial instruments, they just happen to be fun.

And that's not… Fun is not a problem because when you look at the grain futures market, I always go back because the parallels are so clear, 95 percent of the transactions are speculative.

Sometimes I get farmers having fun. They're gambling, speculating on something.

But the key thing here is that you can win on Kalshi. The bulk is people who are doing sophisticated things, and it's a more sophisticated market.

What is the percentage overall of winners versus losers?

It's a zero-sum game. It's like the stock market or active trading in the stock market.

I'll ask you this question this way: How many hedge funds outperform the S&P every year?

Yeah, I mean, in a given year, I don't know how many. 

What do you think is a number, roughly?

Uh, 50 percent?

50? It's like 20.

Ok.

It's amazing. Like 20 percent of hedge funds win. Yeah, like 20 to 30 percent—

And then over time, none of them do.

No, there are, I mean, there are big winners like Citadel and Renaissance. That are like really big winners.

Why? Because competition. Competitions are hard, right? Imagine that number was 50. What should that tell us? If it was 50-50, 50 percent win, 50 percent lose, it would just be a game of chance. There's no skill in this thing.

Anything that has skill, like how many people win the NBA Finals in their careers? It's a very small subset because competitive environments require skill, and when that happens, you're going to have…

So how are you…?

So the answer is actually, if 80 percent of hedge funds lose on the stock market, our numbers are closer to 60, 65 percent of people losing, which is actually more of an equalizer.

Because the one thing we see on Kalshi is actually a much larger diversity of people end up being winners. If you look at our top performers, 79 percent of them went to public school. Our top traders, they're 2x more likely to have worked in retail than worked on Wall Street.

It's kind of amazing if you think about it.

Our best inflation forecaster is a random guy in Kansas who's never traded in the financial markets, just likes…

How does he do it, then? Do you know?

He's read about the economy for 20 years, loves reading about it, very, very calibrated. He's been thinking about it a lot.

And this goes back to Hayek and Tetlock. It's the idea that information and knowledge sits anywhere. They're not sitting with the elites.

And by the way, the Federal Reserve put out a paper in February. It's called "Kalshi and the Rise of Macro Markets."

They compared the Wall Street forecasts, the Bloomberg, on inflation, economy, GDP growth, unemployment, against the Kalshi forecasts for those things, which is Main Street—- Wall Street vs. Main Street.

And the result was actually Main Street was more accurate than Wall Street, and it's also real time. We move in real time.

So is your strategy, obviously you're fighting lawsuits, but is it ultimately like you're going to come up with a number that you say to New York state and Arizona, and you say, "We're not going to give you 51 percent of gross revenue," but do you keep working until you get to a point where they're like, "Ok, we'll live with it"?

I mean, I like to take the optimistic view of things, which is I think there are some people who just don't understand it. So part of it is we're just sitting down and explaining what I just explained.

Right, right.

Because the superficial view on prediction markets, like any markets, it's always the same. Society has always had an affect reaction to prediction markets. It comes around, and they're like, "That feels like gambling. It feels wrong. 

It's either random or it's rigged," right?

Exactly. It's either random or it's rigged, and it's financialization of stuff.

Not because they're bad or good, just because they are hard to understand. And when you explain it more and it gets a little bit more normalized, people, "Oh, that's actually pretty cool."

And you always see it. When I start with a meeting and I end with a meeting, the opinions on this go, "Oh, actually, it can make us think about the future a little bit better. It could depolarize us because now people are thinking more instead of saying stupid things on Twitter."

Clearly, you're not describing any meetings that you've had with the New York State Department.

Well, I mean, look, I can't speak about specific meetings, but my point is, over time, it requires education. There are parts that don't understand, parts that, yeah, there are lobby groups and casinos that are pushing really hard to protect their turf. Or I don't even think they're protecting it. They're not getting cannibalized. I think their view is like, "Oh, it's a big industry. We should have it, too." It's a little bit that sort of thing.

The thing that they're misunderstanding is that this cannot exist state by state.

Why not? 

Because, you know… 

Ok, because gambling does. And I know you make a big distinction. 

With gambling, you go against the house, and you bet against the house. It's localized. That's fine.

But I'm a peer-to-peer market. You don't want the Californians to trade only against Californians, and Texas…

Again, why is New York… Do you prefer a national New York Stock Exchange or 50 different…?

I'm a citizen of the world. So, yeah.

But the point is, exchanges are peer-to-peer, and they require liquidity. They require a large diversity.

It's like Marketplace, Airbnb. Imagine eBay. You can only buy the bag that you want from people in the same state. That doesn't make any sense. You want diversity. The more diverse the participation, the more information, the more it works.

Why do you think prediction markets, and obviously there have been prediction markets probably for as long as humans have had language…

You know what the first one was, right?

I don't.

Pope elections.

Oh, ok.

In the 1400s.

Ok. Yeah, and well, Intrade, which was a predecessor, which was another business, or got run out of business in 2013, was very good at predicting who was going to be pope.

But why does it seem to be exploding now in popularity? Is it that the tech got better? Is it that people have more money?

I think it's two things. One, we approached it from a regulatory-first approach. I always wanted to create a financial market and broaden it into more things.

Prediction markets are just the financial markets. They're just on a different topic. That's it. People are complexifying this.

But the second thing is, when I started in 2018, I think the demand is because, I think it's the polarization that's happening in the country.

And we feel like there's more information than ever, but less truth than ever. Because the filters, the things that are filtering our information, are biased. They're partisan, they're extreme, they're polarized.

The social media algorithms, and you see, you look at two different Twitter feeds and they look entirely different. People have different conceptions of the truth, of what's happening on the ground.

Because if you write seven paragraphs of thoughtful analysis on Twitter, you get two likes. If you write something crazy, like something racist or something ludicrous, just straight-up stupid, you get 10,000 likes.

Because it's clickbaity. It's like the 10-second Reel on Instagram.

I was like, there will need to be, there was going to be a lot of demand for a source of information where the filtering mechanism is very transparent and it's very aligned with truth.

And that's markets.

We used to always joke, when I did my master's at MIT, and I was doing a Ph.D. or working on Wall Street are mostly the same thing, except that you have to be right on Wall Street. You have to do analysis in both.

But my point here is about the incentive structure of the prediction market. It's very, very simple. The seven-paragraph thoughtful analysis probably makes money, and the stupid, extreme takes probably lose money. And all you have to trust is that people like making money and they dislike losing money. That's it.

It's interesting to me that, Kalshi, you were born in California, but you grew up in Lebanon. Your co-founder was born and raised in Brazil.

Can we read anything into that, that these are the two founders, people from countries that are peripheral to, in a way, certainly to America, but kind of to the global economy?

I just think it's naive. It's like the American dream.

I mean, my mom, when we… So I was born in California, moved back to Lebanon. My mom, I grew up with a single mom, and she's kind of a tiger mom. Not kind of. She was very much a tiger.

It would be a lion, right, in Lebanon?

In Lebanon, it would be a lion.

But the whole thing was, like, "You have to go back to the U.S. because that's a country that will, if you have good ideas and you're smart and you work hard," and she knew I was always, like, a math nerd…"You're going to make it, it will reward you for doing that."

And she was right.

She was a ballerina, but also a lot of similar sort of thinking in our household.

And we showed up here, and we're so excited. There are so many different things you can build, and you can challenge the status quo. It's a country that lets you challenge the status quo in a way that no other country lets you.

And that's amazing. That's something we should really cherish, and like keep….

Do you worry about that? I mean, again, we're in New York, which elected a democratic socialist as mayor. You have Donald Trump Jr. as a special adviser. Who you hired, or you announced, a week before the inauguration of Donald Trump Sr. in a second term…

That's not right. That's actually what happened.

Ok. Well, I mean, the press release went out, I think

I don't know, but we actually had done it before the elections. It was not a political decision.

Well, what I'm getting at, though, is that MAGA, Donald Trump has nationalized the economy or socialized it in ways that were unthinkable since FDR.

So on both sides of the aisle, we seem to be pulling away from free market ideology or belief in free markets or belief that America is a place where you can define yourself.

But the people on the left say, "No, you're defined by who your parents were, what race you belong to, what gender or sexual minority." People on the right want to kick out people like you, right? I mean, they don't want Middle Easterners coming to America, even if you're an American citizen.

So, I mean, look, I…

So are you worried about the America that you've moved back to?

Yes, I am worried. I don't think it's necessarily a political thing. I just think it is a structural thing that's happening in the economy that we have to kind of contend with.

I'm 30, so I was going through school like 10 years ago, and when I was going through school, there was still this energy. People were excited. They were pumped. They wanted to build, they wanted to do things, they wanted to start companies.

And my cousin now is going to Columbia, and you don't feel that energy anymore. That, to me, is the most concerning part. 

Where did it go?

I think part of it is there is structural changes happening that society is battling, where there's AI, there is wealth disparity that's being created that is extreme.

And then that is also not… When I think about free markets, I always say the foundation of free markets is everybody needs to have a shot in the competition, right? Everybody needs the same rules, the same rights, and the same obligations.

And if people stop believing that, the competition is tilted. The competition is not a level playing field. I think that's kind of an opposite view to fair markets.

And I'm not here to say, look, the solution is simple. But I think we would argue that capitalism is a good thing, but what we need to contend with and be aware of is that a lot of people are not part of it. They don't feel like they're part of it.

And that's a reality. That's a truth on the ground that we cannot just…

Is it that they're not part of it, or is it that they don't feel they're part of it?

It's equivalent, though.

Yeah. I mean, because one of the arguments about social media, which clearly has a lot to do with this type of stuff, is that the median household income, the median individual income in America, is at all-time highs. It keeps going up, despite the financial crisis, despite COVID, despite geopolitical Sturm und Drang.

But people feel like, "I'm not getting as much as Donald Trump Jr. has, so I feel ripped off," even if they're doing better. I mean, is it important to know what the narrative is and what the facts on the ground are?

And frankly, I do think, because I don't want this to sound partisan, I do think it's bipartisan. I think people on both sides…

Yeah, no, I agree with you completely.

And we engage. Kalshi has engaged. People have talked about Don. We have advisers on the other side of the aisle, Democrats, across the board. And I frankly talk equally to Republicans and Democrats. And there is a lot of thought on both sides about how do we deal with this?

And my view is we may be being a little bit too ideological about capitalism versus socialism.

And to me, it's more like, I think most people would agree that we want a free, competitive economy. We want people to have a shot. We want people to feel part of the system.

And my view is a little bit more practical. It's like, "Look, if the wealth inequality is too out of whack, we need a little bit of a dampening mechanism. Just bring it back."

Is that mechanism, is it heavy taxation? Is it regulation that prevents the formation of new businesses? Is it…?

I don't think we should ever prevent or slow down innovation or prevent the formation of new businesses. My view is more that we need to think about ways to bring the people who feel they're out of the system into the system.

There are simple, kind of naive ways to think of it. I always think, could you have the most successful companies in America, or the rising top 200 tech companies, take a small 1 or 2 percent of their stock, voluntarily?

And I do believe, actually, you sit down with a big enough group of founders and give it to, let's call it whatever, you can define a set of households in America and put it in their children's accounts.

And the thing I love about that idea is all of a sudden people feel, they understand, actually, ok, AI, space, tech, fintech, all these different things that feel completely distant and far removed from you right now, they're tangible.

And it's actually, oh, it moves up over time. And as we're creating value as a society, we're doing the thing that America does: innovate, push the boundaries, take risks. There's tangible value that basically accrues over time.

And to me, it's like we don't need to… Capitalism, it's too much ideology versus, how about the middle ground? Let's make sure we bring people along. And it's not going to hurt the very top that much to do a little bit on the margin.

So you're facing a huge amount of regulatory uncertainty. There's also a huge amount of political uncertainty that's kind of bigger than that.

My view is all companies, tech companies, are facing a lot of that. AI as well…

Well, and technological uncertainty, all of this kind of stuff. But for the midterms, is there an outcome that is better for Kalshi or worse?

I'm frankly, not sure. The idiom is like, "Well, what are you going to do when the Democrats take over?"

And I don't know. Frankly, the internal view is, to me, we've built relationships on both sides. I found actually there's a big group of people on both sides that actually are largely are where we are, which raises my second point.

Who are some of the Democrats? I mean, I think I know some of the Republicans, but many of them are anti-prediction market. But who are some of the…?

I know, it's many. I mean, I think there are some on both sides of the aisle, but I think there's a big group on both sides that is actually pro.

But without naming names, to me, the thing that we're really focused on is what we've been focused on from day one.

We're a company that spent the first four years of our company getting regulated upfront, which is very unusual for Silicon Valley. It's very, very unusual.

And I always say I'm pro-sensible regulation. Banning something is not a form of regulation. It's actually the ultimate deregulation because you're moving it offshore, and you're just closing your eyes and letting it go crazy. And that's what happened with crypto. We banned a bunch of stuff onshore, it went offshore, and people lost their money.

To me, it's always be sound on policy, truly. Try to actually, let's put the ideology aside. Let's actually get it right and communicate that over and over and educate what is right.

And I always say there are certain types of markets that shouldn't exist because those are moral hazards that could create issues. Like the military strike market should not have existed. And we never did it because we're regulated in the U.S., but no one should be able to do it.

Number two is ban insider trading. We have to, because if there's a privileged set that has access that the rest of America does not have, that ruins the markets over time. It destroys trust in the system. We don't want that.

And three, sensible guardrails. There's going to be irresponsible use for any of these products, whether you're trading options on Robinhood or crypto on Coinbase.

Or you're going to the neighborhood bar. You want somebody to send you home when you've had too much.

That's right. Most people who drink alcohol, it's fine. It's great, actually. It is a social lubricant. I mean, there's a small percentage, sub-1 percent, that end up destroying their lives. You want to regulate that out of the system. I believe in that.

And it's like any technology. You have upsides, the steam engine, and then you have your carbon dioxide emissions. Regulation reduces the emissions and optimizes the upside.

And it's always delicate. It has to be delicate and balanced. But it's usually not the best thing for getting a bunch of clicks on social media, right? That's the…Policymaking is boring.

So about 15 years ago, or I think it was 2013, Intrade, an Irish-based prediction market, was regulated out of existence in the U.S.

They were unregulated.

Ok. Well, they were, but they had a CFTC license.

No, they didn't.

Oh, ok.

So we're the first to have gotten the CFTC…That's the difference. 

That's the difference. Thank you.

But what would you put the odds on of you, in five years, Kalshi being bigger than ever and in a clear regulatory market, or…?

I think they're very high. They're very, very high. I mean, we have 30 million customers in the market, right? I mean, it's very big.

And again, the choice is, if you were to ask me whether prediction markets exist in five years, that's 100 percent.

Yeah, of course.

Because it's not a question of whether they're going to exist or not. It's just whether we're going to regulate them the right way. 

You think they will be legal and public and transparent.

Certainly, yes. I mean, I think it's because they're here. I think the question is now, do we regulate it? Do we add the sensible guardrails? Do we just drive it offshore and close our eyes?

But I think usually, again, time is with us because even if you compare it today versus six months ago, way more people understand it. There's much less energy than before.

And the one thing I'll say, the media, you know this, the media just loves the scandals. When the insider trade happened on Maduro, that was like a three-month cycle. It was never-ending, right?

That's what all people would hear about it. And they wouldn't say Polymarket, they'd say prediction markets. They would lump us in.

But it's going to take some time for people to understand that actually, that was a one-off. There are like 30 million customers who are using these things. And yes, there's some bad in any system, and we're going to have to regulate it, but the positives are exciting.

Because to me, you're seeing now, we have thousands of businesses that rely on this.

I mean, people in the Keys around hurricane season start calling in and buying yes on hurricanes in their town because insurance companies don't insure their homes anymore. We have so many insurance use cases that are proliferating right now on sports, on weather, on esoteric things.

Like, there's this bill. I don't know if you saw the story about the goat herder in California. There's a bill in the legislature that was being passed that was going to move. He has 3,000 goats, move goat-herding wages from $70,000 to $40,000, which is going to drive him out of business.

He started calling insurance companies to underwrite this risk. They're like, "We're not going to. I mean, this is crazy."

And so he came to us, and we set up a market. Within two or three hours, the market said there's a 10 percent chance of it happening. Then he bought a $50,000 hedge that would pay out $500,000 if the bad thing happens, and it happened.

So now he has the war chest to go and diversify his business and stay afloat and all that. More of that is basically going to happen.

I guess a final question is, are the lawsuits against you at the state level or at the nonfederal level, is that going to require a Supreme Court decision, do you think?

You know, I just think, for us…

Because the Supreme Court has, I mean, some of these suits are proceeding, so you have a legal argument, which strikes me as pretty solid, but I'm not a lawyer. But is it going to take a Supreme Court decision? I don't know what this is all…

I think maybe. I mean, I think that we'll see. I think there are a lot of things that are in flux because some of the courts where we lost, it was based on a rule that has been changed now.

There are a number of new rules that are regulated that the federal agency, the CFTC, has put forth now. So that's kind of changed. It invalidates a lot of these opinions for good reason.

So it's a bit of a reset that's going to happen.

How important is the actual head of the CFTC to your future?

It's very important, but these things, it's like a push and pull, and some people may disagree with this regulator, right?

My point is that Congress explicitly gave the authority to the CFTC to regulate market structure this way, no matter what the topic is. That's really the law.

And they even say if something is gaming, which you can say the sports game is a game, the CFTC can decide what to do with it. That's the law, and they can decide to allow it and regulate it in a certain way.

You may disagree with the regulations. Some people tell me, well, maybe they're not stiff enough on this or not stiff enough on that.

But that's why you have the separation of powers. Congress delegated their authority to the agency. If you're unhappy with the agency, there may be a shift in two years. There'll be another agency that might be more strict or more loose.

And that's the natural, it's par for the course, natural course of history.

But to me, it's like, as we learn and as data surfaces, as we understand these things better, the better for us. Because the truth and the data is on our side. The best way to tell a good story is to have a good one, and I think we have a good one.

All right. We're going to leave it there. Tarek Mansour of Kalshi, thanks so much.

 

The post Are Prediction Markets Just Gambling? Kalshi CEO Responds appeared first on Reason Magazine.

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© Illustration: Fatima Ruiz

Developers ​of the PHP programming language said they had identified two critical vulnerabilities, and urged ​users to update their sites as soon as a fix was released.

Developers ​of the PHP programming language said they had identified two critical vulnerabilities, and urged ​users to update their sites as soon as a fix was released.

È stata aperta un’indagine formale su Booking.com da parte della Commissione europea. L’obiettivo è verificare come la piattaforma contrasti truffe e frodi ai danni di chi prenota le proprie vacanze. L’annuncio è del 20 ottobre 2026 e si basa sul Digital Services Act (Dsa), il regolamento europeo che impone obblighi stringenti alle grandi piattaforme online.

Sotto la lente finiscono così:

• annunci falsi;
• messaggi di phishing che sfruttano i dati delle prenotazioni;
• trasparenza degli annunci sponsorizzati.

Perché la Commissione indaga su Booking

A partire dal 25 aprile 2023, Booking.com è designata come “piattaforma online di dimensioni molto grandi”. Questa è una specifica categoria del Dsa soggetta agli obblighi più severi. Le grandi piattaforme devono individuare, analizzare e ridurre i cosiddetti “rischi sistemici” legati ai propri servizi.

Questo comprende ovviamente anche frodi e truffe. Secondo la Commissione, Booking potrebbe non aver rispettato questi obblighi. Un’indagine che nasce da un’analisi preliminare delle valutazioni del rischio (presentata tra il 2023 e il 2026). Al centro ci sono i rapporti di trasparenza e le risposte fornite alle richieste di informazioni. Un lavoro complesso, durato a lungo e svolto in collaborazione con l’Autorità olandese per i consumatori e i mercati (il Paese in cui ha sede il gruppo).

In merito si è espressa Henna Virkkunen, vicepresidente esecutiva della Commissione per la Sovranità tecnologica, la sicurezza e la democrazia:

Gli europei dovrebbero poter prenotare le proprie vacanze senza il timore di essere truffati. Il Digital Services Act stabilisce responsabilità chiare per le piattaforme nell’affrontare questi rischi e dobbiamo assicurarci che la principale piattaforma di prenotazione in Europa prenda sul serio queste responsabilità.

Annunci falsi e strutture irregolari

Uno dei fronti più importanti riguarda gli annunci truffa. Un problema che grava sulle spalle dei clienti che prenotano e degli host che affittano. La Commissione vuole capire se Booking abbia valutato e contrastato in modo adeguato il rischio di inserzioni false.

Per capire esattamente di cosa si stia parlando, ecco un esempio. Prenotate un alloggio e all’arrivo i proprietari vi dicono, sorridenti e stupiti, che non “siete nella lista”. Non c’è alcuna traccia di voi e tantomeno del vostro pagamento. Qualcuno ha infatti ben pensato di replicare quell’annuncio, intascare i soldi e sparire.

C’è poi spazio anche per quegli annunci di strutture non conformi alle regole. Una situazione grave e complessa, che vede tutti i partecipanti perdenti, tranne ovviamente i malviventi.

Phishing e dati delle prenotazioni

Si passa poi al phishing. L’indagine esaminerà i rischi legati alle truffe che sfruttano i dati delle prenotazioni. Vi sarà capitato infatti di ricevere dei messaggi all’interno della chat privata con un host. Si chiedono solitamente conferme delle carte o nuovi pagamenti, a fronte di problemi di varia natura.

Bruxelles valuterà come Booking condivide i dati con le strutture ricettive, com’è progettato il servizio di messaggistica interno e quali tutele esistono per evitare che queste informazioni finiscano nelle mani sbagliate.

Annunci sponsorizzati e trasparenza

Che dire poi della pubblicità. Sotto esame ci sono i cosiddetti “boosted listings”. Spiegando il concetto in italiano, si parla di quelle strutture che pagano per comparire più in alto nei risultati di ricerca. Secondo la Commissione, questi annunci potrebbero non essere segnalati con sufficiente chiarezza come pubblicità.

Gli utenti potrebbero non sapere chi ha pagato per quella vetrina, ritenendo che la posizione migliore corrisponda a una più elevata qualità dei servizi o dei locali. Un aspetto tutt’altro che secondario, perché influenza le scelte di chi confronta prezzi e strutture prima di prenotare.

Cosa rischia Booking

Le presunte violazioni riguardano gli articoli 34 e 35 del Dsa, sugli obblighi di valutazione e riduzione dei rischi sistemici, e l’articolo 26, paragrafo 1, sulla corretta identificazione della pubblicità. Di per sé, ovviamente, l’apertura dell’indagine non corrisponde a una colpa, ancora tutta da appurare.

Questo processo consente però alla Commissione di raccogliere ulteriori prove e adottare diversi strumenti:

• misure provvisorie;
• decisione di non conformità;
• accettazione di impegni da parte di Booking per risolvere le criticità.

In base alle regole generali del Dsa, in caso di violazione accertata le sanzioni possono arrivare fino al 6% del fatturato mondiale annuo della società. Parliamo di circa 1,4 miliardi di euro.

TEHRAN, Oct. 21 (MNA) – Stressing Iran’s resilience in the face of pressures and sanctions, President Masoud Pezeshkian has announced delegation of authority to managers and removal of legal obstacles to support exporters and spur export activities.

By  Jacob G. HORNBERGER

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Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Right-wing and left-wing interventionists and interventionist mainstream-press commentators are up in arms over President Trump’s decision to ease economic sanctions against Russia in connection with the Russian government’s agreement to supply diesel fuel to the United States.

The notion is that nothing — not even the midterms — must be permitted to interfere with the Cold War II racket that holds that Russia is an aggressor nation that is hell-bent on conquering the world and, therefore, that it is necessary to target the Russian populace with severe impoverishment and even death by starvation or illness with ever-more economic sanctions.

Central to this racket, of course, is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The notion was that Russia was on the march. As soon as it conquered Ukraine, U.S. officials maintained, it would re-conquer Eastern Europe, and then Western Europe and England, and then make its way to South America, Central America, Mexico, and finally the United States, all of which Russia would reconstitute into a new Soviet Union of the world. In other words, Russia is coming to get us again.

The Cold War I racket was used to justify the conversion of the federal government to a national-security state, a type of governmental structure that came with omnipotent powers, including the power of orchestrating and committing state-sponsored assassinations. The racket enabled the national-security branch of the government to quickly become the most powerful branch of the federal government, one to which the president, Congress, and the Supreme Court decided to defer.

The Cold War I racket was also used to justify an anti-communist crusade, during which the U.S. national-security establishment targeted suspected communists, both here and in foreign countries, with destruction of reputation or even with assassination.

Beginning in 1989, the Cold War racket came to a sudden and unexpected end. The Berlin Wall was torn down, Germany was reunified, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and Russian troops withdrew from Eastern Europe.

Officials in the U.S. national-security branch — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — naturally were extremely concerned. Suddenly, they had lost the justification for their existence and for the racket that they were certain would go on forever. People were talking about a “peace dividend,” which would involve a deep reduction in national-security-state spending and maybe even a restoration of America’s founding governmental system of a limited-government republic.

To replace the old racket with a new racket, new official enemies were developed, such as “the terrorists,” “the Muslims,” “the drug dealers,” and “the illegals.” They were all coming to get us, or so they said. Everyone remained deathly afraid.

But the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA were not about to let go of their old Cold War racket so easily. After providing Soviet officials with assurances during the negotiations over German reunification that NATO would not expand eastward, U.S. officials proceeded to do precisely that. NATO began marching eastward, absorbing former members of the Warsaw Pact and moving inexorably toward Russia’s borders, knowing full well what Russia’s reaction would be.

That was what the threat to absorb Ukraine into NATO ultimately accomplished — provoking Russia into invading Ukraine in an effort to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. U.S. officials had been warned for years that NATO expansion, especially into Ukraine, could produce precisely such a confrontation. Yet they proceeded anyway.

Voila! The national-security branch had its old Cold War racket back, albeit in a revised format. The Russians are coming to get us … again (along with the terrorists, the Muslims, the drug dealers, and the illegals). The big fly in the ointment, however, is that Russia has been unable to conquer Ukraine. That’s, of course, a problem. If Russia can’t even conquer Ukraine, how is it going to be able to conquer Eastern Europe, Western Europe, England, South America, Central America, Mexico, and then the United States? Whoops!

Never mind that inconvenient problem. In the eyes of national-security statists, it is imperative that we continue hewing to the official narrative. Russia is coming to get us, just like before. We need ever-increasing budgets for the national-security establishment and its ever-growing army of voracious fat-cat “defense” contractors. Who cares if the United States goes bankrupt in the process? We need to again be kept “safe” from the Reds — I mean, the Russians (and from the terrorists, Muslims, drug dealers, and illegals.)

Oh, and don’t forget the Cuban Reds! They are coming to get us too. No doubt the right-wing and left-wing interventionists and the interventionist mainstream press, all of whom remain steadfast acolytes of the national-security establishment, are scared to death that President Trump might lift the old Cold War embargo and the new Cold War blockade against the Cuban people as well. Of course, fat chance of that happening given Trump’s own interventionist mindset.

Original article:  www.fff.org

Wer Rüstungsausgaben unter dem Gesichtspunkt kritisiert, dass das Geld, das für Rüstung ausgegeben wird, irgendwo anders eingespart werden muss, erntet in der öffentlichen Debatte schnell Kritik. Einen solchen Zusammenhang gäbe es nicht.

Und ja, in der Theorie haben die Verteidiger von Rüstungsausgaben in diesem Punkt auch durchaus recht. Doch alle Theorie ist grau. In der Praxis liegt hier sogar ein doppelter Denkfehler vor. Wer immer mehr Geld in die Rüstung pumpt, sorgt sogar dafür, dass unser Wohlstand sinkt.

In politischen und ökonomischen Debatten gibt es nichts Schlimmeres als Verlogenheit und doppelte Standards. Dummerweise ist aber gerade die Debatte um die Staatsausgaben stark von ebenjenen doppelten Standards geprägt.

Beispiel gefällig? Jahrzehntelang haben konservative Politiker und neoliberale Ökonomen versucht, uns einzutrichtern, dass man jeden Euro nur einmal ausgeben könne und „schuldenfinanziertes Wachstum“ nur ein Strohfeuer sei, das zulasten späterer Generationen abgefackelt würde. Überflüssig zu erwähnen, dass diese Aussagen falsch sind. Erstaunlich ist jedoch, dass diejenigen, die Kredite für Investitionen in Bildung, Infrastruktur oder die Energiewende für ökonomisches Teufelszeugs halten, plötzlich das Schuldenmachen für Rüstungsausgaben ganz prima finden. Wobei die bittere Ironie des Ganzen ist, dass sie damit gleich doppelt falsch liegen.

Um das wirklich zu verstehen, lohnt es sich, ein wenig tiefer in die ökonomischen Hintergründe einzusteigen. Selbstverständlich „darf“ der Staat Schulden machen. Er muss sogar Schulden machen – vor allem dann, wenn die Unternehmen und die Haushalte sich gerade mal wieder nicht selbst verschulden wollen und auf der anderen Seite aber auch nicht wissen, wohin sie mit ihren Ersparnissen sollen. Wer einen Euro spart, braucht auf der anderen Seite jemanden, der sich um exakt diesen einen Euro verschuldet.

Dass Staatsschulden in der Debatte oft so negativ bewertet werden, mag mit dem Begriff als solchem zu tun haben. „Schuld“ ist ja in der deutschen Sprache negativ besetzt. Vermeiden wir also diese sprachliche Vorbewertung und sprechen stattdessen von Investitionen. Darum geht es nämlich schlussendlich. Doch nicht überall, wo „Investition“ draufsteht, ist auch eine Investition drin.

In der Volkswirtschaft unterscheidet man zwischen Investitionen und Konsum. Grob gesagt werden Investitionen als Ausgaben definiert, die einen aktiven Effekt auf die künftigen Einnahmen haben. Auf Unternehmensebene ist das betriebswirtschaftlich betrachtet recht einfach zu erklären. Wenn ein Unternehmen z.B. in eine neue Fabrik investiert, kann es künftig mehr Güter verkaufen. Investiert es in Forschung und Entwicklung, kann es künftig bessere Produkte verkaufen und damit seinen Marktanteil vergrößern oder eben höhere Margen realisieren.

Um solche Investitionen zu tätigen, verschuldet sich ein Unternehmen in der Regel. Die dahinterstehende Logik ist klar: Solange die Vorteile, also z.B. höherer Absatz, höherer Marktanteil, höhere Margen, in Summe größer sind als die Kosten, also vor allem die Zinsen, ist die Investition sinnvoll.

Davon zu unterscheiden sind Konsumausgaben. Wenn ein Unternehmen beispielsweise einen Kredit aufnehmen sollte, um seinen Managern eine Sause in der Karibik zu finanzieren, ist das keine Investition, da diese Sause in der Regel keine Auswirkungen auf die Einnahmen in der Zukunft hat.

Auf volkswirtschaftlicher Betrachtungsebene ist die Unterscheidung vor allem bei den Staatsausgaben etwas komplexer. Wenn der Staat beispielsweise den Schulen und Universitäten mehr Geld zur Verfügung stellt, so fließt dieses Geld auf der ersten Betrachtungsebene vor allem in Form von Löhnen an die Haushalte – Lehrer und Dozenten verdienen Geld und geben ihren Lohn in der Volkswirtschaft aus, was über die Binnennachfrage die gesamte Volkswirtschaft stimuliert.

Auf dieser Betrachtungsebene gibt es erst einmal auch keinen Unterschied zu den Militärausgaben. Volkswirtschaftlich gesehen unterscheiden sich der Lohn für einen Lehrer und der Lohn für einen Soldaten nicht und sowohl der Ingenieur in der Panzerfabrik als auch der Sozialwissenschaftler in einem Fraunhofer-Institut geben große Teile ihres Lohns in der Binnenwirtschaft aus und kurbeln sie damit an. Ob es bereits auf dieser Ebene sinnvoll sein kann, die Staatsausgaben, die diesen Stimulus auslösen, über Schulden zu finanzieren, liegt im Auge des Betrachters. Doch darum soll es hier gar nicht gehen.

Die eigentliche Abweichung findet nämlich auf der zweiten Ebene statt, auf der man dann den Unterschied zwischen Investition und Konsum erkennen kann. Ein besseres Bildungssystem führt zu qualifizierteren Schul- und Universitätsabsolventen, die ihrerseits die Produktivität des Standorts steigern. Der gut ausgebildete Facharbeiter zahlt nicht nur mehr Steuern als der ungelernte Hilfsarbeiter, sondern er hat als Arbeitnehmer auch einen positiven Effekt auf die Wertschöpfung der gesamten Volkswirtschaft.

Und wer weiß, vielleicht gründet er am Ende selbst ein Unternehmen und schafft neue Arbeitsplätze. Genau so entsteht am Ende Wachstum. Ausgaben zur Verbesserung des Bildungssystems sind somit Investitionen. Sie sorgen dafür, dass die Volkswirtschaft künftig produktiver wird, und nebenbei sorgen sie auch dafür, dass mittel- bis langfristig die Steuereinnahmen steigen.

In der Volkswirtschaft gibt es sogar Kennzahlen, die diesen Effekt zumindest näherungsweise beschreiben – den Fiskalmultiplikator, der die künftigen Steuereinnahmen beschreibt, die eine staatliche Investition auslöst, und den Staatsausgabenmultiplikator, der die Auswirkungen einer Investition auf das Bruttoinlandsprodukt beschreibt. Bei Investitionen ins Bildungssystem geht die Wissenschaft meist von einem Multiplikator von 1,9 aus. Ein Euro Investitionen in die Bildung erzeugt also 1,90 Euro Wirtschaftswachstum. Ähnlich hoch ist der Wert bei Investitionen in die öffentliche Infrastruktur.

Bei Investitionen in die erneuerbaren Energien liegt der Multiplikator in den meisten Studien bei 1,11 bis 1,20. All diese Investitionen sind also – zumindest sehr grob überschlagen – volkswirtschaftlich sinnvoll, wobei der konkrete Effekt natürlich auch immer von der konkreten Investition abhängt. Wenn ein Staat also Schulden aufnimmt, um in diesen Sektoren zu investieren, ist dies grundsätzlich aus ökonomischer Sicht erst einmal positiv zu bewerten.

Doch wie sieht es nun mit der Rüstung aus? Gelten hier die gleichen Regeln? Nein. Zudem müsste hierbei zunächst einmal geklärt werden, ob man überhaupt von Investitionen sprechen kann. Ein gut ausgebildeter Bürger steigert die Produktivität. Eine neue Bahntrasse steigert die Produktivität. Günstige, verlässliche Energien steigern die Produktivität.

Doch was macht ein Panzer?

Der steht im besten Fall sinnlos in einer Kaserne und wenn er mal bewegt wird, macht er im Friedensfall die Straßen und im Kriegsfall alles andere kaputt. Welche positiven Effekte er mittel- bis langfristig auf das Bruttoinlandsprodukt oder die Steuereinnahmen haben soll, ist zumindest mir nicht klar. Volkswirtschaftlich macht es daher keinen nennenswerten Unterschied, ob der Staat Steuergelder dafür verwendet, Panzer herzustellen oder das Bundeskanzleramt mit einer goldenen Kuppel zu verschönern. Beides sind Konsumausgaben – volkswirtschaftlich korrekt hat dies der Ökonom Hyman Minsky als „Kollektivkonsum“ definiert. Man könnte es auch als Staatskonsum bezeichnen.

Eine Studie der Ökonomen Tom Krebs und Patrick Kaczmarczyk von der Universität Mannheim aus dem letzten Jahr hat einmal versucht, die volkswirtschaftlichen Auswirkungen der Folgeeffekte von Militärausgaben für den oben genannten „Staatsausgabenmultiplikator“ zu beziffern. Die beiden Forscher kamen auf die ernüchternde Zahl 0,5. Das bedeutet: Im besten Fall führt jeder ausgegebene Euro zu 50 Cent zusätzlicher Wirtschaftstätigkeit. Wir erinnern uns: Bei Bildungs- und Infrastrukturinvestitionen liegt der Wert bei 1,9. Die Idee, dass Rüstungsausgaben Investitionen seien und man mit einem „Kriegskeynesianismus“ auch in Friedenszeiten Wohlstand schaffen kann, ist somit der erste Denkfehler dieser Debatte.

Kommen wir nun zum zweiten Denkfehler. In der Theorie kann der Staat sich so hoch verschulden, wie er will. In der Praxis ist dies aber dann doch anders. Für jeden geliehenen Euro Schulden fallen Zinsen an und diese Zinslast wird aus dem laufenden Haushalt bezahlt. So konkurrieren, zumindest in der Praxis, stets verschiedene Arten von Staatsausgaben untereinander. Durch Buchungstricks, wie der Schaffung eines als „Sondervermögen“ bezeichneten Kreditrahmens, kann man zwar im Hier und Jetzt mehr Geld ausgeben, als man hat. Auch diese Kredite müssen aber irgendwann getilgt werden und Zinsen fallen dabei ja auch noch an.

Und daher stehen die Rüstungsausgaben dann doch in direkter Konkurrenz mit anderen Staatsausgaben. Immer wenn es seitens der Politik heißt, für dies oder das wäre nun einmal leider kein Geld da, muss man natürlich fragen, warum das so ist. Und hier kommt man gar nicht drumherum, auf den Elefanten im Raum zu zeigen.

Nun könnte man – wie in der politischen Linken gerne argumentiert wird – sagen, diese Kosten holt man halt über zusätzliche oder höhere Steuern, wenn möglich von den „Reichen“, wieder rein. Das kann man machen. Aber das ändert an der grundsätzlichen Frage ja nichts. Wenn man zusätzliche Einnahmen generiert, so muss man auch bei diesen Einnahmen die Frage stellen, ob man sie nicht sinnvoller ausgeben könnte. Das Volumen der Staatseinnahmen ändert überhaupt nichts daran, dass ökonomisch sinnlose Staatsausgaben ökonomisch sinnlos sind. Wenn ich mein Erspartes für eine Sause verprasse, spielt es auch keine Rolle, wie hoch mein Einkommen ist. Diese Sause ist und bleibt eine ökonomisch sinnlose Konsumausgabe.

Im realen Leben stellt sich daher auch nicht die Frage, ob der Staat einen Euro für Bildungsinvestitionen UND einen Euro für die Rüstung ausgibt. Es geht darum, ob er einen Euro für Bildungsinvestitionen ODER einen Euro für die Rüstung ausgibt.

Und wenn man nun die oben genannten Multiplikatoren einbezieht, sollten sämtliche Denkfehler beseitigt sein. Gibt der Staat einen Euro für das Bildungssystem aus, steigert er den Wohlstand des Landes. Gibt er einen Euro für die Rüstung aus, senkt er den Wohlstand des Landes. Ist das wirklich so schwer zu verstehen?

Originalbeitrag NachDenkSeiten

Non c’è modo di combattere l’Impero senza aggirare il suo controllo sul sistema finanziario internazionale.

Segue nostro Telegram.

Si sta già scatenando il finimondo quando si tratta di indagare su ciò che sta realmente accadendo in relazione agli ultimi, decisamente oscuri, movimenti legati agli Stati Uniti sul territorio e nelle acque pakistane. Dopo una prima analisi su Transition Protocol – che, come ammesso, non ha fornito tutte le risposte necessarie – abbiamo approfondito l’argomento con un’analisi molto più completa, supportata da diverse fonti.

Ciò che stiamo osservando in diversi punti nevralgici della connettività terrestre estremamente delicata tra Iran e Pakistan non è una chiusura totale delle frontiere, bensì un delicato equilibrio su due fronti da parte di Islamabad tra l’enorme morsa finanziaria di Washington e l’ancora di salvezza strategica di Teheran.

Ecco quindi a che punto siamo, integrando i dati verificati con le nostre ultime consultazioni.

Il punto chiave: il fattore scatenante dal punto di vista normativo è stata una misura di sanzioni bancarie, non solo la sicurezza delle frontiere.

Sebbene i funzionari provinciali del Balochistan abbiano pubblicamente attribuito la sospensione di sabato in due nodi chiave, Taftan e Gabd–Rimdan, a motivi di sicurezza, antiterrorismo e lotta al contrabbando, ciò che conta di più è l’esatto meccanismo relativo a un memorandum emanato venerdì scorso dal Ministero del Commercio pakistano.

Tale memorandum ha immediatamente revocato la proroga del 3 ottobre relativa all’esenzione dal Modulo Elettronico di Importazione (EIF) per le merci importate dall’Iran, e ha coinciso con l’ordine impartito da Islamabad di chiudere il valico di frontiera dell’Agenzia Federale di Investigazione (FIA) a Taftan.

L’aspetto fondamentale è che, senza l’esenzione dall’EIF, gli importatori pakistani devono gestire gli acquisti iraniani attraverso i canali bancari ufficiali pakistani – cosa che le sanzioni statunitensi, ovviamente, rendono assolutamente impossibile.

Peyman Sanandaji, presidente della Commissione Trasporti della Camera di Commercio di Teheran, ha confermato ufficialmente che è proprio il rispetto delle sanzioni bancarie (l’abbandono dell’EIF) ad aver bloccato le esportazioni iraniane verso il Pakistan.

Lo shock immediato ai valichi ufficiali è stato notevole: sono a rischio oltre 4.000 tonnellate di importazioni giornaliere di GPL iraniano attraverso Gabd–Rimdan. L’ex presidente della Camera di Commercio di Quetta, Ayoub Miryani, ha riferito che oltre 2.000 container sono bloccati nella sola Gabd–Rimdan, con altre centinaia di autocarri merci in coda a Taftan.

Ma perché sta accadendo proprio ora? A causa della spiacevole coincidenza tra la rata del FMI del 7 ottobre che il Pakistan doveva pagare e l’«Operazione Economic Outcast» del Tesoro imperiale statunitense.

Nell’ambito dell’«Operazione Economic Outcast», Washington ha concesso ai paesi terzi una «scadenza ben definita per interrompere» i collegamenti commerciali con l’Iran, pena l’espulsione dal sistema finanziario statunitense. A ciò hanno fatto seguito le designazioni dell’OFAC del 1° ottobre contro le reti ferroviarie terrestri e industriali iraniane e le azioni dell’8 ottobre contro 17 petroliere della «flotta ombra».

Ma poi, il 7 ottobre – appena nove giorni prima che il Ministero del Commercio revocasse la deroga EIF – Islamabad ha raggiunto un accordo con il FMI sulla quarta revisione della sua Extended Fund Facility per sbloccare 1,21 miliardi di dollari. Ciò richiede ancora l’approvazione del Consiglio esecutivo del FMI.

Naturalmente non esiste alcun documento pubblico che dimostri un ordine diretto da parte degli Stati Uniti o del FMI di chiudere i confini tra Iran e Pakistan. Tuttavia, fonti di Islamabad hanno sottolineato che lasciare in vigore una deroga a tempo indeterminato sugli strumenti bancari in vista del voto del Consiglio del FMI era diventato per il Pakistan un punto di vulnerabilità insostenibile in materia di sanzioni.

Le fonti di Islamabad sostengono con fermezza che la mossa fosse accompagnata da autentiche preoccupazioni in materia di controsabotaggio e silenziosamente coordinata tra Islamabad e Teheran (corsivo mio), affinché la sospensione non compromettesse i rapporti bilaterali.

Il portavoce del Ministero degli Esteri iraniano, Esmaeil Baghaei, ha pubblicamente definito l’interruzione una pausa temporanea dovuta a «problemi tecnici» e a «misure precauzionali».

Da parte loro, fonti ufficiali pakistane hanno insistito sul fatto che i controlli più rigorosi costituiscono una misura congiunta di antiterrorismo che riflette la «reciproca comprensione» con Teheran a seguito di un’impennata degli attacchi nel Sistan-Baluchistan, delle imboscate autostradali e di un attacco marittimo avvenuto l’11 ottobre contro imbarcazioni della Guardia Costiera pakistana al largo di Jiwani – che i funzionari pakistani hanno attribuito ad «attori stranieri» intenti a sabotare la mediazione del Pakistan nell’accordo di pace con l’Iran.

Si torna allo stesso vecchio schema dei salafiti-jihadisti strumentalizzati e manipolati dai soliti sospetti.

L’unica telefonata pubblicamente confermata tra il vice primo ministro Ishaq Dar e il ministro degli Esteri Abbas Araghchi ha avuto luogo domenica 18 ottobre – due giorni dopo il memorandum del 16 ottobre – e i resoconti ufficiali menzionano solo la diplomazia regionale e la riunione dell’OIC a Baghdad.

Pertanto, il coordinamento preventivo a livello di vice primo ministro Dar e ministro degli Esteri Araghchi, così come gli arresti specifici per sabotaggio, fanno parte della nostra stessa cronaca.

Esportazioni asimmetriche di generi alimentari e rotte informali

In sintesi, le merci continuano a attraversare i confini. Islamabad ha deliberatamente lasciato in essere le esportazioni pakistane di prodotti deperibili e alimentari verso l’Iran. Prodotti deperibili essenziali – tra cui pomodori, patate e cipolle – continuano a circolare, insieme ai tradizionali flussi di petrolio e carburante, attraverso il poroso confine lungo 909 km.

La documentazione normativa ne spiega il motivo: otto mesi fa, il Pakistan ha emanato una deroga separata relativa agli strumenti bancari, specificamente per dieci prodotti alimentari esportati via terra verso l’Iran (elencando esplicitamente riso, patate, cipolle, pomodori, carne e frutta), oltre ai prodotti farmaceutici.

La Camera di Commercio di Teheran ha confermato sabato scorso che, mentre le esportazioni iraniane verso il Pakistan sono bloccate dalla norma EIF, le importazioni dal Pakistan verso l’Iran proseguono, e il commercio informale di carburante e il commercio transfrontaliero attraverso il Baluchistan operano già per un valore stimato compreso tra 800 milioni e oltre 1 miliardo di dollari all’anno al di fuori dei canali doganali ufficiali.

Si dovrebbe prestare particolare attenzione ai porti di Gwadar e Karachi, nonché all’architettura complessiva del transito Cina-Iran. Secondo le nostre fonti, il transito di merci provenienti da paesi terzi e quello tra Cina e Iran attraverso il Pakistan rimane protetto.

A livello giuridico, un documento che descrive in dettaglio il transito delle merci attraverso il Pakistan ha stabilito sei corridoi di transito terrestri designati che collegano Gwadar, Karachi e Port Qasim a Gabd e Taftan per le merci provenienti da paesi terzi dirette in Iran, sotto la garanzia di una banca.

Inoltre, una notifica del Federal Board of Revenue dello scorso giugno ha formalmente designato la stazione ferroviaria di Taftan come stazione doganale terrestre, mentre i ministri iraniani e pakistani promuovono il corridoio ferroviario per collegare la Cina all’Iran e all’Europa.

Tuttavia, permangono due vincoli operativi molto complessi.

La modernizzazione della linea ferroviaria Quetta-Taftan è ancora ufficialmente classificata come un progetto di potenziamento; inoltre, la designazione da parte dell’OFAC, avvenuta il 1° ottobre, della Compagnia Ferroviaria della Repubblica Islamica dell’Iran (RAI) era esplicitamente volta a ostacolare il passaggio di Teheran dalle rotte marittime bloccate al trasporto ferroviario.

Per riassumere: ci vuole una maestria eccezionale per affrontare l’Impero della Pirateria. Islamabad ha messo in atto una manovra classica e ben calibrata: revocare visibilmente la deroga formale alle importazioni EIF a Taftan e Gabd–Rimdan per proteggere la sua tranche in sospeso da 1,21 miliardi di dollari del FMI e le banche pakistane dalle sanzioni secondarie del Tesoro statunitense.

E nel contempo ha mantenuto attive con Teheran le esportazioni alimentari pakistane, i canali informali di confine e gli accordi di transito con paesi terzi.

Se ciò rimarrà un breve riassetto amministrativo o si consoliderà in un punto di strozzatura più duraturo sarà deciso da tre indicatori nel corso delle prossime due settimane:

1. Una notifica modificata relativa all’EIF o al baratto da parte del Ministero del Commercio.
2. Sdoganamento separato per le merci in transito verso Gwadar/Karachi.
3. Movimenti documentati di merci lungo il collegamento ferroviario Taftan–Zahedan.

Possa questa lezione rimanere impressa nelle terre rare affinché l’intero Sud del mondo rifletta: non c’è modo di combattere l’Impero senza aggirare il suo controllo sul sistema finanziario internazionale.

from TheDailyGold: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

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by Ron Paul, Ron Paul Institute: Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), recently warned about the danger from the United States government’s high debt level. She also criticized some government officials, such as US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, for believing that economic growth can make the debt problem disappear. The idea […]

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TEHRAN, Oct. 21 (MNA) – The US national debt has grown by nearly $400 billion in the two months since it reached a record $40 trillion, according to US Treasury Department data.

Russia’s central bank has reduced its gold holdings to their lowest level in nearly seven years as the Kremlin faces a widening budget deficit, declining energy revenues and mounting expenditure on its war against Ukraine.

Russia has carried out its largest sustained reduction in gold reserves since the financial crisis of 1998, disposing of approximately 62 tonnes of the precious metal since December 2025 as the government draws on accumulated reserves to finance a growing federal budget deficit.

According to figures released by the Bank of Russia on Tuesday, 20 October, the country’s monetary gold reserves declined by another 200,000 troy ounces, equivalent to approximately 6.2 tonnes, during September.

The latest reduction brings Russia’s official gold holdings to 72.8 million troy ounces, or approximately 2,264 tonnes, their lowest level since the end of 2019.

The central bank has now reduced its gold holdings for ten consecutive months, reversing the accumulation strategy pursued by Moscow in the years preceding its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Largest gold sell-off since the 1998 crisis

The scale of the current reduction is exceptional by Russian historical standards.

According to International Monetary Fund data cited in reporting on the latest figures, the only more rapid depletion of Russian gold reserves in the country’s modern history occurred during the 1998 financial crisis.

At that time, Russia’s central bank disposed of approximately 118 tonnes of gold over three months as the government defaulted on domestic debt and the rouble collapsed.

Some of those holdings were subsequently replenished, leaving the country’s gold reserves approximately 50 tonnes lower at the end of 1998.

The reduction recorded during 2026 has already exceeded that annual net decline, although Russia’s present financial position differs substantially from the circumstances surrounding the 1998 default.

The monetary value of Russia’s remaining gold reserves stood at approximately $301.6 billion at the end of September, compared with $333.5 billion a month earlier. The change reflects movements in gold prices as well as the reduction in physical holdings.

Budget deficit reaches 7.3 trillion roubles

The sales come as the Russian government struggles to contain expenditure associated with its continuing military campaign against Ukraine.

Moscow now expects its federal budget deficit to reach 7.3 trillion roubles, approximately $87 billion, in 2026. That represents 3.2 per cent of gross domestic product, twice the deficit originally anticipated.

Military and security expenditure is expected to account for approximately 38 per cent of total federal spending this year.

The government has increasingly relied on its National Wealth Fund, established to accumulate surplus energy revenues, to cover budget shortfalls.

The central bank’s gold transactions are linked to operations involving the fund. Under this mechanism, the Bank of Russia conducts corresponding market sales following Finance Ministry transactions using the fund’s assets.

Figures published by Russia’s Finance Ministry earlier this month showed that the National Wealth Fund’s liquid assets had fallen to approximately 3.8 trillion roubles, equivalent to $45 billion, as of 1 October. This was down from approximately 4 trillion roubles a month earlier.

The fund’s total assets remained substantially larger, at almost 13 trillion roubles, but much of that amount is invested in shares, bonds and other holdings that cannot immediately be converted into funds for government expenditure.

War expenditure puts pressure on Kremlin finances

Russia’s fiscal problems have been compounded by weaker oil and gas revenues, a slowdown in economic activity and the increasing cost of sustaining military operations.

Although energy exports continue to generate substantial income, government revenue has failed to keep pace with spending commitments.

Moscow has consequently increased domestic borrowing, introduced additional taxes and sought alternative sources of budget financing.

The latest gold figures provide further evidence of the financial demands imposed by the war, now approaching its fifth anniversary.

They do not indicate that Russia is approaching an immediate financial collapse. The country still holds considerable gold and foreign exchange reserves, with the central bank reporting total international reserves of approximately $731.8 billion at the end of September, although access to part of its overseas assets remains restricted by Western sanctions.

Nevertheless, the continued liquidation of gold holdings reduces the reserve assets available to the Russian authorities at a time when military spending remains elevated and the government faces pressure to meet its domestic financial commitments.

For President Vladimir Putin, the growing budget deficit introduces an additional economic consideration into decisions over the duration of the war.

The September figures show that Moscow is increasingly drawing on assets accumulated before the invasion to support current expenditure, while its capacity to rebuild those reserves remains dependent on future revenues and the government’s ability to restrain spending.

British and Gulf officials have called on businesses and investors to begin turning a landmark free trade agreement into concrete partnerships without waiting for its formal ratification, as both sides seek to deepen economic ties and expand cooperation beyond traditional trade.

The calls came during the UK-GCC Strategic Dialogue Forum, organised by The Business Year in central London on Tuesday, bringing together senior officials, representatives of Gulf sovereign wealth funds and private sector companies to explore investment opportunities arising from the agreement.

The UK became the first G7 economy to conclude negotiations on a free trade deal with the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on 20 May 2026, when the British government announced that talks had been completed following nearly four years of negotiations that began in June 2022.

However, the agreement has yet to be formally signed and ratified, with both sides still working to finalise and legally verify its text before completing the necessary government and parliamentary procedures.

While the deal is not yet legally in force, officials at the forum stressed that businesses could already begin identifying investment opportunities, building partnerships and preparing projects that could benefit from improved market access once it takes effect.

GCC Secretary-General Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi described the agreement as a "significant achievement" in relations between Britain and the Gulf states, stressing that its importance extended well beyond the immediate benefits of trade.

Speaking at the forum, Albudaiwi said the agreement would strengthen economic partnerships, support diversification efforts and improve competitiveness across the Gulf economies, which have increasingly sought to reduce their dependence on oil revenues.

"GCC estimates put total investment between the two sides at $643 billion, while bilateral trade reached approximately $70 billion in 2025," he said.

The agreement is expected to eliminate tariffs on more than 90% of GCC exports to the UK, opening new opportunities for businesses and strengthening the Gulf's position as a major economic partner for Britain.

"The deal would support the GCC's wider economic objectives, including greater economic integration, diversification of production, improving the business environment and empowering the private sector," Albudaiwi said.

He highlighted opportunities in developing smart cities, sustainable living and attracting leading international technology companies, alongside cooperation in healthcare, financial technology, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and clean energy.

These sectors have become increasingly important to Gulf economic transformation plans, as governments seek to attract international expertise, develop new industries and create sources of growth beyond oil and gas.

The GCC chief stressed that the success of the agreement would ultimately be measured not simply by its signing, but by the joint ventures, business partnerships and economic opportunities it generated.

He urged business leaders and investors from both sides to seize the opportunities offered by the agreement and begin translating its provisions into practical projects.

UK pledges support amid regional uncertainty

British Trade Minister Lord Anas Sarwar echoed those calls, urging businesses not to wait until the agreement had been formally signed and ratified before exploring new partnerships.

Addressing the forum, Sarwar acknowledged that the Gulf was experiencing a "nervous time" and a "time of challenge", offering assurances of Britain's continued support for its regional partners.

"It is in difficult times that you know where your friends are," he said, explaining that his first overseas visit as trade minister had been to the Gulf.

Sarwar stressed that the partnership was important to the British government and could contribute to economic growth and improved living standards across the UK.

He described the relationship as being about more than signing an agreement, calling for immediate cooperation across sectors including aviation, security systems, financial services and legal services.

He also highlighted opportunities in artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure, pointing to Britain's research capabilities and the Gulf's access to energy and resources needed to support the expansion of data centres and cloud computing infrastructure.

Such cooperation could allow British companies to contribute technical expertise and specialist services to major Gulf development projects, while creating opportunities for Gulf investors to expand their involvement in Britain's technology and infrastructure sectors.

Sarwar said economic cooperation needed to work in both directions, with Britain seeking not only greater Gulf investment in the UK but also increased British investment and exports into Gulf markets.

He also encouraged businesses to explore joint investments in third countries, arguing that UK-Gulf cooperation should extend beyond bilateral projects.

Lord Mayor of London Alderman Sir Alastair King similarly highlighted the potential for British and Gulf investors to combine their resources and expertise to pursue opportunities in other international markets.

The UK hopes the agreement will encourage larger and more sustained flows of Gulf capital into British infrastructure, property and other strategic sectors, while opening one of the world's most important markets to British exporters.

The emphasis on joint investment also reflects a broader ambition to move beyond conventional trade in goods and services towards longer-term partnerships involving technology, infrastructure development and international projects.

Four years of negotiations

GCC chief negotiator Raja Almarzoqi expressed optimism about the agreement's long-term economic benefits, revealing that negotiators from both sides had held approximately 900 meetings before reaching an agreement.

He said one of the most challenging aspects of the negotiations had been securing a unified position among the GCC's six member states, which have different economic priorities and domestic interests.

Almarzoqi cited studies by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund suggesting that free trade agreements could increase trade between participating countries by 60% to 100% over five to ten years after implementation.

He expressed confidence that the UK-GCC agreement could deliver similar results, although the scale of any increase would depend on how businesses used the opportunities created by the deal.

Kuwait's Trade Minister Abdulaziz Naser Almarzouq also emphasised the importance of economic diversification, saying Gulf countries were seeking high-quality investments capable of supporting sustainable long-term growth.

He described Britain as a strong economic partner and called for existing relations to be expanded through new investment opportunities.

Discussions at the forum also focused on financial markets, investment and the Gulf states' economic transformation strategies, including Oman's efforts to diversify away from an energy-dependent economy.

The free trade agreement is expected to provide British companies with greater long-term access to Gulf markets while giving GCC businesses improved opportunities to expand their activities in the UK.

For businesses, the potential benefits extend beyond tariff reductions to opportunities for new commercial relationships, investment planning and greater participation in sectors targeted for growth by both sides.

However, the agreement's practical benefits will depend on its final provisions, implementation and the extent to which companies are able to take advantage of the new arrangements.

Although the main terms were agreed in May, the final legal text must still be completed and verified before the agreement can be signed. It will then need to undergo the necessary approval procedures in Britain and the GCC states, including parliamentary scrutiny in the UK.

TEHRAN, Oct. 20 (MNA) – Arab media have claimed that the United States and Iran have given their preliminary approval to a fresh 'compromise proposal' presented by Pakistan and Qatar.

The EU “will not drill and will not buy” Arctic oil and gas, EU officials said on Tuesday (20 October), as the European Commission presented its new Arctic strategy. 

“Our position on Arctic oil, gas and coal has not changed,” a senior EU official told reporters. “It’s fairly simple. We will not drill in the Arctic, and we will not buy hydrocarbons from the Arctic.”

The strategy follows months of heavy lobbying by Norway’s prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre and his cabinet. 

Oslo used the energy supply disruption caused by the Iran war to push the EU to drop its 2021 support for a moratorium on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic, insisting that it was crucial for future energy security. 

But EU officials made clear on Tuesday they did not buy that argument. “We do not need Arctic resources to keep our energy supply secure,” the official said.

What happened to the moratorium?

This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership

No hay forma de luchar contra el Imperio sin eludir su control sobre el sistema financiero internacional.

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Ya se ha desatado el caos a la hora de investigar qué está ocurriendo exactamente en relación con los últimos movimientos, sin duda turbios y vinculados a EE. UU., en territorio y aguas pakistaníes. Tras una evaluación inicial en Transition Protocol —que, como se reconoció, no proporcionó todas las respuestas necesarias—, profundizamos en un análisis mucho más exhaustivo respaldado por varias fuentes.

Lo que estamos observando en varios puntos clave de la conexión terrestre entre Irán y Pakistán, de extrema sensibilidad, no es un cierre total de la frontera, sino un delicado equilibrio de doble vía por parte de Islamabad entre la tremenda presión financiera de Washington y el salvavidas estratégico de Teherán.

Así que esta es la situación actual, combinando los datos contrastados con nuestras últimas consultas.

El punto clave: el detonante normativo fue una medida de sanciones bancarias, no solo la seguridad fronteriza.

Aunque los responsables provinciales de Baluchistán justificaron públicamente el sábado el cierre de dos puntos clave —Taftan y Gabd–Rimdan— alegando motivos de seguridad, lucha contra el terrorismo y lucha contra el contrabando, lo que más importa es el mecanismo exacto en torno a un memorándum emitido el viernes pasado por el Ministerio de Comercio pakistaní.

Dicho memorándum revocó de inmediato una prórroga, concedida el 3 de octubre, de la exención del Formulario Electrónico de Importación (EIF, en inglés) para mercancías importadas de Irán, y coincidió con la orden de Islamabad de cerrar el puesto de inmigración de la Agencia Federal de Investigación (FIA, en inglés) en Taftan.

Lo fundamental es que, sin la exención del EIF, los importadores pakistaníes deben tramitar las compras iraníes a través de los canales bancarios oficiales de Pakistán —lo que, por supuesto, las sanciones estadounidenses hacen absolutamente imposible.

Peyman Sanandaji, presidente de la Comisión de Transporte de la Cámara de Comercio de Teherán, confirmó oficialmente que ha sido el cumplimiento de las sanciones bancarias (el abandono del EIF) lo que ha paralizado las exportaciones iraníes a Pakistán.

El impacto inmediato en los pasos fronterizos oficiales fue considerable: están en peligro más de 4.000 toneladas de importaciones diarias de GLP iraní a través de Gabd–Rimdan. El expresidente de la Cámara de Comercio de Quetta, Ayoub Miryani, informó de que solo en Gabd–Rimdan hay más de 2.000 contenedores varados, con cientos de camiones de mercancías más atascados en Taftan.

¿Por qué está ocurriendo esto ahora? Debido a la nefasta coincidencia entre el pago del tramo del FMI del 7 de octubre que Pakistán tenía que abonar y la «Operación Economic Outcast» del Tesoro imperial estadounidense.

En el marco de la «Operación Economic Outcast», Washington dio a terceros países un «plazo definido para cerrar» las vías de suministro comerciales relacionadas con Irán o enfrentarse a la expulsión del sistema financiero estadounidense. A esto le siguieron las designaciones de la OFAC del 1 de octubre contra las redes ferroviarias terrestres e industriales de Irán y las medidas del 8 de octubre contra 17 petroleros de la «flota en la sombra».

Pero entonces, el 7 de octubre —solo nueve días antes de que el Ministerio de Comercio revocara la exención del EIF—, Islamabad llegó a un acuerdo con el FMI sobre la cuarta revisión de su Servicio Ampliado del Fondo para desbloquear 1.210 millones de dólares. Esto aún requiere la aprobación del Consejo Ejecutivo del FMI.

Por supuesto, no existe ningún documento público que demuestre una orden directa de EE. UU. o del FMI para cerrar las fronteras entre Irán y Pakistán. Pero fuentes de Islamabad subrayaron que mantener vigente una exención de instrumentos bancarios de duración indefinida antes de la votación del Consejo del FMI se había convertido en una vulnerabilidad insostenible para Pakistán en materia de sanciones.

Las fuentes de Islamabad insisten en que la medida vino acompañada de auténticas preocupaciones por el contrasabotaje y se coordinó discretamente entre Islamabad y Teherán (cursiva mía) para que la pausa no rompiera las relaciones bilaterales.

El portavoz del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores iraní, Esmaeil Baghaei, calificó públicamente la interrupción como una pausa temporal debida a «problemas técnicos» y «medidas de precaución».

Las fuentes oficiales pakistaníes, por su parte, insistieron en que el endurecimiento de los controles es una medida conjunta de lucha contra el terrorismo que refleja un «entendimiento mutuo» con Teherán tras un repunte de los atentados en Sistán-Baluchistán; las emboscadas en autopistas; y un ataque marítimo perpetrado el 11 de octubre contra embarcaciones de la Guardia Costera de Pakistán frente a Jiwani —que las autoridades pakistaníes atribuyeron a «actores extranjeros» que pretendían sabotear la mediación de Pakistán en el acuerdo de paz con Irán—.

Vuelta al mismo patrón de siempre: yihadistas salafistas utilizados como arma y manipulados por los sospechosos habituales.

La única llamada telefónica confirmada públicamente entre el viceprimer ministro Ishaq Dar y el ministro de Asuntos Exteriores Abbas Araghchi tuvo lugar el domingo 18 de octubre —dos días después del memorándum del 16 de octubre— y sus comunicados oficiales solo mencionan la diplomacia regional y la reunión de la OCI en Bagdad.

Por lo tanto, la coordinación previa a nivel de los ministros Dar y Araghchi y las detenciones específicas por sabotaje forman parte de nuestra propia información.

Exportaciones asimétricas de alimentos y rutas informales

En resumen, los productos siguen cruzando las fronteras. Islamabad ha permitido deliberadamente que sigan circulando los productos perecederos y las exportaciones alimentarias pakistaníes hacia Irán. Los productos perecederos esenciales —entre ellos, tomates, patatas y cebollas— siguen circulando, junto con los flujos tradicionales de petróleo y combustible, a través de la porosa frontera de 909 km.

El registro normativo explica el motivo: hace ocho meses, Pakistán promulgó una exención bancaria específica para diez productos alimenticios exportados a Irán por vía terrestre (en la que se enumeraban explícitamente el arroz, las patatas, las cebollas, los tomates, la carne y la fruta), además de productos farmacéuticos.

La Cámara de Comercio de Teherán confirmó el pasado sábado que, si bien las exportaciones iraníes a Pakistán se ven paralizadas por la normativa del EIF, las importaciones de Pakistán a Irán continúan, y el comercio informal de combustible y el comercio fronterizo a través de Baluchistán ya alcanzan un volumen estimado de entre 800 millones y más de 1 000 millones de dólares anuales al margen de los controles aduaneros oficiales.

Debe prestarse especial atención a los puertos de Gwadar y Karachi, así como a la arquitectura general de tránsito entre China e Irán. Según nuestras fuentes, el tránsito de terceros países y el tránsito entre China e Irán a través de Pakistán sigue estando protegido.

A nivel jurídico, un documento que detalla el tránsito de mercancías por Pakistán estableció seis corredores de tránsito terrestre designados que unen Gwadar, Karachi y Port Qasim con Gabd y Taftan para la carga de terceros países con destino a Irán bajo una garantía bancaria.

Además, una notificación de la Junta Federal de Ingresos del pasado mes de junio designó formalmente la estación de ferrocarril de Taftan como puesto aduanero terrestre, y los ministros iraníes y pakistaníes han promovido el corredor ferroviario para conectar China con Irán y Europa.

Sin embargo, siguen existiendo dos limitaciones operativas muy complicadas.
La modernización de la línea ferroviaria Quetta-Taftan sigue figurando oficialmente como una mejora prevista; y la designación por parte de la OFAC, el 1 de octubre, de la Compañía Ferroviaria de la República Islámica de Irán (RAI) tenía como objetivo explícito frenar el cambio de Teherán de las rutas marítimas bloqueadas al ferrocarril.

En resumen: se necesita una habilidad extraordinaria para enfrentarse al Imperio de la Piratería.

Islamabad ha llevado a cabo una maniobra clásica y calculada: revocar de forma visible la exención formal de importación del EIF en Taftan y Gabd-Rimdan para proteger su próximo tramo del FMI, de 1.210 millones de dólares, y a los bancos paquistaníes de las sanciones secundarias del Tesoro de EE. UU.

Y todo ello sin dejar de mantener vivas las exportaciones alimentarias paquistaníes, las vías fronterizas informales y los marcos de tránsito de terceros países con Teherán.

Que esto siga siendo un breve reajuste administrativo o se consolide en un cuello de botella más prolongado lo decidirán tres indicadores durante las próximas quince días:

1. Una notificación modificada del EIF o del trueque por parte del Ministerio de Comercio.
2. Despacho de aduanas independiente para la carga en tránsito por Gwadar/Karachi.

Movimientos de mercancías documentados a través del enlace ferroviario Taftan-Zahedan.

Que la lección quede grabada en las tierras raras para que todo el Sur Global reflexione: no hay forma de luchar contra el Imperio sin eludir su control del sistema financiero internacional.