News Aggregation

The Roots of Tulip Mania So, what is the story with the tulip mania? Well, as some may be aware, the tulip is a national symbol of the Netherlands. The country is affectionately known by some as “the flower shop of the world.” If you’ve ever been to the Netherlands, you’ve probably seen some or visited some of the beautifully cultivated fields of colorful tulips lining the landscape of the Dutch countryside. There are countless tulip museums and tulip festivals are still celebrated annually throughout the country. The Dutch people even took their love of tulips abroad when emigrating from their homeland, starting up tulip festivals in places like New York (which Holland.com points out was originally known as New Amsterdam) and in the town aptly named Holland located in the U.S. state of Michigan. Despite this near obsession with tulips, the flower is not native to the Netherlands. They are actually native to the Pamir and Tan Shan mountain ranges located in Central Asia primarily in modern-day Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan. They were brought to the Netherlands in the late-16th century from the Ottoman Empire where the flower had been cultivated for decades prior. A botanist by the name of Carolus Clusius who in the 1590s had begun an important botanical garden at the University of Leiden, was one of the first to really pioneer the cultivation of tulips in the Netherlands. He had his own private garden in which he planted numerous bright and beautiful tulips and devoted much of his later life to studying the tulip and the mysterious phenomenon known as tulip breaking. Tulip Breaking and the Allure of the Diseased Bloom Tulip breaking is key to the story of the tulip mania. It was a strange occurrence in which the petal colors of the flower suddenly changed into multicolored patterns. Many years later it turned out that these strange looking tulips were actually the result of a virus that had infected them. Nonetheless, these essentially diseased multicolored tulips did nothing but serve to ramp up the tulip craze further. The mesmerizing diseased tulips became even more valuable than the uninfected ones and Dutch botanists began to compete with each other to cultivate new hybrid and more beautiful varieties of tulips. These became known as “cultivars” and would be traded among a small group of botanists and other flower aficionados. As time passed, the trade grew out from the group and botanists began to receive requests from people they did not know for not only the flowers, but the bulbs and seeds in exchange for money. Tulip brokerages began to open up and what was originally a “gentlemanly pursuit” turned into an all-out war for profits. A Golden Age for Trade — and Speculation Part of what helped this interest in Tulips grow, along with people’s willingness to exchange money for them, was the fact that the Netherlands in the early part of the 1600s had become the richest country in Europe mostly through trade. During this Dutch Golden Age, not only were there aristocrats with money, but middle-class merchants, artisans and tradesmen also found themselves with extra coin burning a hole in their pockets. Basically, this meant more people were able to spend money on luxuries such as cultivars that perhaps in other European countries would not have been commonplace. Besides the fact that people had money up and down the social class structure, the Netherlands and specifically Amsterdam already had robust trading platforms. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange opened in 1602 and the Baltic Grain Trade, an informal futures market itself, had begun decades earlier. The Netherlands was therefore primed for a new trade, which was to become Tulip Mania. The Bubble Inflates Tulips became the talk of the fledgling Dutch Republic.  “Neighbors seemed to talk to neighbors; colleagues with colleagues; shopkeepers, booksellers, bakers, and doctors with their clients gives one the sense of a community gripped, for a time, by this new fascination and enthralled by a sudden vision of its profitability,” wrote Anne Goldgar in Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age.  By the 1620s, prices were already rising to incredible levels. One story in particular was of an entire townhouse offered in exchange for just 10 bulbs of the very special cultivar, Semper Augustus (shown to the right), that had petals that looked a bit like a candy cane. Although the offer of an entire house for just 10 bulbs was incredible in its own right, the fact that the offer was rejected outlines just how much these flowers were considered to be worth at the time. In the years that followed it became more and more apparent that the tulip bulbs themselves were going for more money than the actual bloomed flowers. Speculators piled into the markets like wildfire, trading the bulbs rather than the flowers, which resulted in what you might call a futures market. By 1633, rather than bother with guilders, the Dutch even began using the bulbs as a currency themselves. There are numerous records of land properties being sold for bulbs. At the time, guilders and florins referred to the same Dutch currency and were used interchangeably throughout the 17th century. As word spread that one could make ridiculous sums of money simply by buying and selling the bulbs, prices skyrocketed even higher. According to the BBC, in 1633 a single bulb of Semper Augustus was worth 5,500 guilders. 4 years later in 1637, the sum had nearly doubled to 10,000 guilders. A bulb worth 10,000 guilders in 1637 would be roughly equivalent to €100,000–€120,000 today. You may be wondering what a guilder is—the guilder was the Dutch currency up until the adoption of the Euro. Having said that, to put the above numbers into perspective, according to Mike Dash who wrote Tulipomania: The Story of the World’s Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused, “It was enough to feed, clothe and house a whole Dutch family for half a lifetime, or sufficient to purchase one

Leer en Español Merchandise exports from Asia (excluding Japan) fell 5.3% year on year in 2023, the sharpest decline since 2015. This was chiefly due to a downturn in the global electronics cycle—electronics are the region’s key export—as firms ran down the large inventories they had accumulated during the pandemic rather than making new purchases. But in recent months the tide has turned, and our Consensus is for further rises in exports from Asia in coming quarters. AI boom helps exports from Asia to recover After many months of continuous contractions, goods exports from Asia finally returned to growth in Q4 2023 in many of the region’s key exporters, such as China, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. And this improvement has continued this year, with export readings often beating the market forecast; Taiwan’s March exports growth was more than double analysts’ forecasts, for instance. The gradual exhaustion of the electronics destocking cycle and the surge in demand for AI applications around the world is buoying demand for the region’s IT exports—particularly for semiconductors, the backbone of the AI industry. Upgrades to the market forecast Since the end of last year, our Consensus for growth of goods exports from Asia (excluding Japan) in 2024 and 2025 has roughly doubled to 2.2% and 4.4%, respectively, with further upgrades possible in the months ahead. These readings would be higher still were it not for China, whose export growth is set to be muted due to Western trade and tech restrictions, plus overcapacity in some sectors weighing on export prices. Risks to the outlook for exports from Asia are elevated Not everything will be plain sailing for exports from Asia in the coming years. As well as the aforementioned difficulties faced by China, rising protectionism in the West more generally is a key risk to the region as a whole. If Donald Trump clinches the U.S. presidency, he has threatened to jack up tariffs not just on China but also on the wider world, which could rewire the global trade environment—and not in Asia’s favor. Adding to this, the EU is also aiming to build greater autonomy in key strategic sectors such as electric batteries and microchips. And in the Middle East, conflict could further disrupt trade flows; shipping via the Red Sea has already been interrupted this year by Houthi attacks.   Insight from our panelists Sonal Varma and Si Ying Toh, research analysts at Nomura, spoke about the upbeat economic outlook for the region: “The most important factor underpinning our positive cyclical view is the turn in the goods cycle, which we believe is transitioning from a recovery to an expansionary phase. This is mainly led by semiconductors, due to the end of the inventory correction phase and rising AI demand. As such, the benefits should percolate largely to the open,tech-oriented economies in the region.” On the impact of Trump’s proposed 60% tariff on Chinese imports, Goldman Sachs analysts said: “The 2018-19 trade war did slow China’s economic growth, in our view. We estimated a cumulative drag of 0.65pp on the level of GDP in China through channels such as lower exports, increased uncertainty, and tighter financial conditions. If we were to linearly extrapolate our estimates but adjust for the now-smaller share of Chinese exports that go directly to the US, then a 60% tariff on Chinese goods would reduce China’s real GDP by around 2pp.” Our latest analysis Argentina’s exports rose in March. Inflation in France fell in March.  

Norway is providing Ukraine with an additional $7 billion in 2026, or an astounding 1.23% of GDP. Norwegian Defense Minister Tore O. Sandvik invited Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal to participate for the first time in the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) meeting. The two sides signed a memorandum to establish joint defense manufacturing in Ukraine, and a subsequent memorandum to establish unified quality standards for such products. Norway is building defense industry links with Ukraine and positioning itself as a major player in the European/NATO frameworks. Norway gave Ukraine the green light for free trade back in April 2025. The Norwegian government already poured $15 billion into Ukraine since the start of the war in 2022, but nothing among governments is charity. All European leaders believe Ukraine has a chance of winning this war, with those at the top believing it will provide them with access to the riches of Russia. Governments are broken beyond repair. The belief in Brussels if that sovereign debt defaults could be avoided through raiding Russia and profiting on the ongoing war. Norway’s long-term Nansen Support Programme framework envisages providing a total of 275 billion kroner (about $27 billion) in aid to Ukraine for the period 2023-2030. The nation believes it can rebuild Ukraine through green initiatives, collaborating with Nordic Environmental Finance Corporation (Nefco) to provide Ukraine 25.5 million euros in green infrastructure projects. Nefco had already been operating in Ukraine for 20 years, but managed to mobilize 400 million euros since 2022 for, or through, Ukraine. European economies bet it all on Ukraine. Joint ventures within Ukraine, defense production that depends on a prolonged war, and rapidly expanding reconstruction funds. Germany offered an additional $3.45 billion this week. NATO also announced a massive $60 billion package to Ukraine, or half of Ukraine’s defense spending budget for the year ahead. Most of this funding is supposed to hit Ukraine in 2026—precisely when the computer is predicting a global event unlike anything I have seen.

Nancy Pelosi, 86, is preparing to exit Washington—don’t let the door hit you on the way out! Pelosi is a prime example of a career politician who uses the guise of public service as a self-serving career for power and fortune. First elected in 1987, Pelosi has spent her entire career treading in the swamp. She began volunteering for the California Democratic Party in 1962 after graduating college. In 2001, she joined the House Democratic Caucus, by 2003, she became the minority leader, and in 2007, she became the first female Speaker of the House. Pelosi has never lost an election, nor does she have any experience outside of politics. Nancy Pelosi has accumulated a $240 million fortune through blatant inside trading. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Nvidia, among others—when the government is making moves, her “husband” just so happens to make lucky trades ahead of the news. Her current salary is $174,000, previously $223,500, and she will earn a $139,000 annual pension upon retirement. Naturally, she will still have those inside sources and continue to grow her wealth. https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Pelosi-Denial.mp4 In the past decade, Pelosi’s inside trading has generated an 816% return. She has outperformed the S&P 500 by 559 percentage points. Her portfolio grew 71% in 2024 alone. This is all par for the course, as countless other public servants have amassed a fortune through high-value inside trading. Progressive members of the Democratic Party have been pushing Pelosi out. The younger generation is more socialistic and less willing to openly generate wealth through backroom deals. Although she has not officially declared retirement, Pelosi is 86 years old and facing numerous health issues. The Democratic Party is separating in a massive way, becoming a national embarrassment. She has nothing to lose by sliding away from the swamp now, especially is Prop 50 passes in California and provides the Democrats more leverage in the elections by redrawing congressional district maps.