These people are sick
EU committing ‘harakiri’ – Lavrov
The bloc is making its people “suffer” while Russia still has “plenty of buyers” for its energy, the foreign minister has said
The EU is effectively committing “harakiri” by abandoning Russian energy in an attempt to hurt Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
Speaking on Monday to students at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), Russia’s primary college for diplomats, Lavrov argued that European leaders are making their own voters bear the cost of their policies toward Russia.
The EU has committed to phasing out Russian fossil fuels completely by 2027, having drastically reduced Russian oil and gas imports since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Energy costs have risen across much of the bloc, with the US-Israeli war on Iran adding further pressure.
Germany, once considered the EU’s industrial powerhouse, has been particularly affected. Its economy contracted in both 2023 and 2024 – the first back-to-back annual decline in more than two decades – and is forecast to grow by just 0.5% this year.
“Europe is simply committing harakiri and proudly declaring that its people must suffer… for European values,” Lavrov said, referring to the Japanese ritual suicide also known as seppuku.
“Apparently, by ‘European values’ they mean Nazism, burying Nazi criminals with honors, and banning the Russian language, Russian-language education, Russian culture and media, as well as the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church,” he added.
Lavrov argued that the EU’s attempt to pressure Moscow has failed to deprive Russia of customers. “There’s no panic here whatsoever. We’ve always had plenty of buyers,” he said, adding that Russian exporters have shifted toward “those who are more reliable.”
“If Europe wants to pay $800-900 per thousand cubic meters for American liquefied natural gas, what can we do about it?” he asked.
Russia has increasingly redirected its energy exports toward Asia amid Western sanctions. Its seaborne crude shipments to China hit a record 1.86 million barrels per day in January, up 46% year-on-year. Russia has also remained India’s largest oil supplier, selling around 2.1 million bpd in August, or 45% of the country’s imports, according to maritime intelligence firm Kpler.
Lavrov said the shift should not be viewed as a sudden “pivot to the East,” arguing that Russia has long cultivated economic ties in both directions.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who survived an assassination attempt by a pro-Ukraine activist, similarly described the EU as a “suicide ship” in April, accusing Brussels of “ideological blindness and incompetence.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen acknowledged last month that the loss of cheap energy imports had dealt a major blow to the bloc’s economy. Lavrov argued that the policies demonstrate that European leaders “don’t think about the voters that brought them to power.”
https://www.rt.com/russia/645235-europe-committing-harakiri-lavrov/
The next inflation wave is being printed right now. Own the assets that get repriced, not the cash that gets debased. The world’s reserve currency has lost about 9% of its value this year.
U.S. debt has passed $40 trillion, Treasury yields are near multi year highs, and foreign demand is showing signs of weakening.
M2 is already growing 5.4% year over year. That matters a lot more to me than another argument over whether this month’s inflation came from oil, tariffs or wages.
Short interest in the median S&P 500 stock is up to 3.2% of market cap, the highest level since 2009.
This is now approaching the 2008 Financial Crisis peak of ~3.8%.
By comparison, during the 2022 bear market, this percentage was ~1.7%.
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/the-next-inflation-wave-is-being-printed-right-now-own-the-assets-that-get-repriced-not-the-cash-that-gets-debased-the-worlds-reserve-currency-has-lost-about-9-of-its-value-this-year/
U.S. national debt crosses $40 trillion
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pledged-fiscal-restraint-instead-debt-tops-40-trillion-2026-09-02/
The debt crossed $40 trillion only 19 months into Trump’s second term, while higher Treasury yields are making that debt increasingly expensive to service.
Global bond selloff pushes borrowing costs to multi decade highs
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/bond-selloff-deepens-inflation-oil-prices-jolt-markets-2026-09-02/
Government bond yields across major economies are rising because investors are demanding more compensation for inflation and enormous government borrowing.
Norway’s $2.3 trillion sovereign fund proposes cutting Treasury exposure
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/04/worlds-biggest-sovereign-wealth-fund-plans-to-cut-treasury-holdings.html
Hackers Withdraw 320 Million In Bitcoin From Blockstream's Liquid Network Federation Reserves
The Liquid Network said Sunday that purported white-hat hackers withdrew about 4,000 bitcoin, worth about $320 million, from the federation wallet that backs L-BTC.
Bridge nodes were disabled, and the sidechain was paused. Other issued assets, including USDT, DePix and RWAs, were unaffected, the official account said on X.
The Liquid Network is a federated sidechain of Bitcoin, founded by Adam Back’s Blockstream. The Liquid chain issues a variety of assets such as LBTC, which it backs with BTC on the Bitcoin main chain, held in a large multisig of 15 corporate and known members. 11 of the 15 members need to sign a valid multi-signature transaction to move coins from the treasury. Before the hack, the treasury held over 4200 BTC; after the hack, Blockstream’s proof of reserves page reports a little over 207 BTC left.
The hackers withdrew 4,019.4 BTC from the reserve address in a peg-out transaction using the SideSwap Peg-out Authorization Key. SideWap is a bridge exchange and a member of the Liquid Federation. While details on the mechanism of the hack are not confirmed yet, it appears an inflation bug on the LBTC side chain was exploited by the hackers to create over 4,000 LBTC that did not exist before, and cash them out for on-chain bitcoin from the federation. Because the transaction appeared as valid, given the consensus bug, the federation members’ HSM security servers signed the BTC withdrawal transaction, worth roughly 320 million at the time.
The hacker moved the funds to an address ending in 6gyqjlte, from which they quickly signed a new transaction with a message on the OP_RETURN arbitrary data field saying “we are whitehats. contact us on chain.” Those coins were still at that address at the time of writing.
A small mainnet transaction to the hacker address followed by an OP_RETURN saying “Please contact security@blockstream.com”, presumably from a Blockstream public address, though that remains unconfirmed. A later OP_RETURN spend from the hacker address carried “Please contact us on Signal @m671aw.70”, however, this may be spam and does not share a link to the address with the stolen funds.
In response to the breach, exchanges were told to pause L-BTC deposits and withdrawals. Bridge nodes on the Liquid Network have been paused, limiting access to the side chain, which continues to produce blocks.
https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/alleged-white-hat-hackers-withdraw-4000-bitcoin-blockstreams-liquid-network-federation