Hypernormal Investing: Growing Capital & Protecting Wealth Amid Radical Uncertainty
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Subscribe to Hypernormal Times for more episodes and other market content. Ten months after Europe's Crisis of Competence, one of the most listened-to episodes of Hypernormal Investing, I caught up again with Brawlster, author of The Brawl Street Journal, to ask what has changed. The answer is not much, and most of it for the worse. We discuss: • EU regulation hitting reality. The LNG methane rules carry fines of up to 20% of global turnover, and Brussels is already telling member states not to enforce them. The packaging regulation is pushing small businesses out of cross-border trade. • German energy policy. Economy Minister Katherina Reiche offers a small glimmer of hope, but there's no route back to nuclear. • German politics. Chancellor Merz is polling around 15% and pressing charges against people online who call him a liar, in a coalition where sensible reform dies at the hands of the SPD. • Europe's energy dependency. Europe swapped Russian gas for US LNG, and a short US export halt could empty European storage by mid-January. • Nord Stream. A US-owned "freedom gas" pipeline and a reverse-Nixon strategy towards Russia. • Sovereign stress. French 10-year yields are at th