Canada Retail Sales Fell 1.1% In May, Largest Drop In A Year

President Trump has delayed his decision on whether the U.S. will join Israel’s airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear program, with sources indicating he has concerns about potential regional instability, according to the New York Post.

The president has specifically mentioned Libya as a cautionary example in private discussions, according to three sources close to the administration who spoke about the deliberations. Trump reportedly expressed worry about Iran becoming "another Libya," referring to the North African nation’s descent into chaos following the 2011 NATO bombing campaign that removed dictator Moammar Khadafy.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Thursday that the president is postponing his decision for up to two weeks, citing "a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future."

Diplomatic efforts are continuing, with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi scheduled to meet with his counterparts from the UK, France, Germany and the EU in Geneva on Friday. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff will not attend these talks but has maintained separate communications with Iranian officials, according to Leavitt.

One source familiar with the administration’s thinking indicated that if military action is taken, Trump appears to be leaning toward limited airstrikes targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow and Natanz, potentially using 30,000-pound "bunker buster" bombs that Israeli aircraft cannot carry.

Source: Investing

The Senate rules-keeper has decided that Republicans can’t use President Donald Trump’s multi-trillion dollar tax bill to strip all funding from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and to cut salaries for many Federal Reserve employees.

The parliamentarian ruled that the GOP-backed policy provisions are outside the scope of the fast-track budget process Republicans are using to push Trump’s legislative agenda through without any Democratic backing, Senate Democrats said. Republicans didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The budget process, which is immune to a filibuster, can be used for legislation primarily aimed at revenue and spending, not for making other changes to public policy.

Senate Republicans are planning to begin voting on their version of the $3 trillion tax and spending cut bill next week.

The GOP bill would have eliminated CFPB’s funding and it would have saved $1.4 billion by cutting non-monetary policy employee pay at the Fed to match levels at the Treasury Department.

The rules-keeper also rejected provisions eliminating the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and the Environmental Protection Agency air-pollution emissions standards for vehicles.

The ruling on the CFPB is the latest blow to the Trump administration’s attempt to gut the agency, which has been the subject of court fights.

Democrats plan to challenge dozens of other provisions as violating Senate rules. These include sections curtailing regulations on short-barrel shotguns and silencers as well as applying financial pressure to states to stop them from regulating artificial intelligence.

“We will continue examining every provision in this Great Betrayal of a bill and will scrutinize it to the furthest extent,” the Senate Budget Committee’s top Democrat, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, said in a statement.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters this month that he would oppose efforts to overrule the Senate parliamentarian. When the GOP is in the minority, Thune has argued, the 60-vote threshold for such bills is a vital tool.

More decisions from the Senate rules-keeper are expected in the coming days.

Source: Bloomberg Europe

The battle for top artificial intelligence talent is intensifying, according to Barclays, with recent data and high-profile moves pointing to escalating competition between tech giants and AI labs.

“Seven-figure retention bonuses and lengthy non-competes may not be enough to keep top talent,” Barclays analysts wrote, adding that “recent headlines suggesting much larger payouts (and acqui-hires) indicate the AI talent wars continue to escalate.”

The spotlight has reportedly intensified with Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, which brings founder Alexandr Wang to the company.

Barclays noted this is just the latest in a string of moves by major players to lure top minds, often from rivals like Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL), DeepMind, and OpenAI.

SignalFire’s 2025 State of Talent report, cited by Barclays, estimates that over 20% of employees at leading AI labs were poached from big tech firms.

Google alone, excluding its DeepMind unit, is said to account for about a quarter of these transitions. “It’s no surprise to us that Google shows up as the largest exporter of AI talent… they were the largest and arguably the best AI lab pre-ChatGPT,” Barclays said.

Anthropic has emerged as a major talent magnet, with 80% employee retention from 2023–2024 compared to OpenAI’s 63%. “The outflow of employees from both OpenAI and DeepMind to Anthropic is surprising,” said the bank.

They added that it “speaks to the huge talent that originated at Google and OpenAI in the early AI era.”

Barclays also cited reports that Meta (NASDAQ:META) has offered signing bonuses up to $100 million to OpenAI researchers and continues to poach talent for its “superintelligence” team led by Mark Zuckerberg.

“Net net, we think it’s fair to conclude that the AI talent ‘war’ is alive and well,” Barclays concluded.

Source: Investing

Such protests have also hit other overcrowded European destinations, and thankfully haven’t been violent. In Spain, they dramatize the contradictions in a remarkable, decade-long recovery from the euro-zone’s financial crisis. That rebirth makes it something of a guinea pig for three of the rich world’s biggest issues — migration, housing and the energy transition — and in certain respects a counterpoint to the United States. Both countries are dealing with the aftereffects of massive housing bubbles that came to a head almost two decades ago. Both have recovered, but did so with almost totally opposed policies now coming under strain.Tourism has been central to the Spanish revival. The sector had already developed far beyond its roots offering cheap holidays in the sun for Britons, but last year drew 134 million visitors, 10 million more than in 2023, and nearly treble the 48 million population. The intake was greater than any ever received before the pandemic. Only neighbor France attracted more tourists last year; the US was third.

A halo of services has grown up to cater to them, including, Rafael Hurtado of Allianz points out, luxury hospitals: “People come from all over the world to lose weight at the Buchinger Wilhelmi fasting clinic in Marbella.”

Such developments exacerbate tension already created by a shortage of housing for local people in tourist spots, particularly combined with a startling influx of migrants that the government has directly encouraged. Over a million arrived last year. In such circumstances, social pressure is inevitable; Spain’s ability to navigate it could provide critical lessons for the rest of the world.

Housing Bubble

Spain was the only country to suffer a housing bubble even more severe than the US. Starting in 1995, American home prices rose 130% before peaking in 2005, according to the S&P Case-Shiller indices. Spain’s rose 213% and hit a top two years later.

There were similar causes. Financial systems proved inadequately regulated and distributed loans too easily. Global imbalances pumped in far more money than the housing sectors could possibly use. Low euro-zone interest rates brought German financiers into Spanish construction looking for yields unavailable at home.

Both countries raised public debt to get through the crisis that followed the Lehman collapse in 2008. Five years later, they had public-sector debt ratios to GDP of about 100%. But unlike the US, which has control of its own currency and could print a lot of it, membership of the euro forced Spain into austerity measures to avoid default. Now, even after Covid, Spain sits at 101.8%, while the US is 124.3%, making it more vulnerable to the “bond vigilantes” who once forced Spain into crisis.

“We are now in a very comfortable position because we did what we needed to do 10 years ago,” says Iñigo Fernandez de Mesa, who heads Rothschild in Madrid and was finance minister during the crisis. “All the countries in the EU that are growing — Greece, Cyprus, Ireland, Spain — did their reforms a decade ago.” They did this because they had to, Fernandez told a conference organized by Unigestion in Madrid this week, but that turned out to be a “huge opportunity.”

Spain radically restructured its banking industry. In 2007, it had 45 savings banks, known as cajas, that were mutually owned and often effectively controlled by local politicians. Two are left. In the US, banks avoided a similar reckoning. The non-bank sector has boomed, and more deregulation lies ahead under Trump 2.0.

US house prices are now 75% above their bubble-era peak, creating a nightmare affordability problem. Spanish homes are cheaper than in 2007. But despite past overdevelopment, there’s a housing shortage in the places where people want to live. White elephant developments stay empty. Burned in 2008, investors won’t build on a scale that would relieve the pressure on tourist regions and cities, which drives the anger in the protests.

Immigration

Americans are, of course, embarking on an ambitious attempt to send migrants back. Spain’s approach is diametrically different. “2025 will mark Spain as a beacon for inclusion and living in harmony with migrants,” said Elma Saiz, immigration minister in the left-wing minority government, as she hailed a sweeping reform that came into effect last month. It aims to legalize 300,000 undocumented migrants a year. The US clampdown on migration from Latin America is driven by cultural concerns. There’s a belief that the Latino population will not assimilate. In Spain, cultural affinity to Latin America is seen as a key to attracting gifted young workers. Assimilation isn’t an issue. No other EU country has a similar source of potential new people.

Even where cultural issues are far tougher, the Spanish approach is strikingly liberal. The Canary Islands have become a major entry point for people fleeing Africa — and soccer stars like Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal and Ansu Fati demonstrate that the African community is forming roots. Last year, Madrid signed agreements with Gambia and Mauritania on “circular migration,” in which people could come and work legally, and then return.

Nevertheless, the abrasive attempt to encourage migrantas is creating opposition. Like all other major European countries, Spain has a growing populist anti-immigration party. Recent polls show Vox gaining support rapidly this year to reach 15% — still a long way behind recent electoral showings for the Rassemblement National in France, or Alternative für Deutschland in Germany. Memories of the Franco dictatorship, which endured until 1975, create greater resistance to the hard right than in France.

Still, the influx is on a greater scale than the country has seen before. In 2013, during the recession that followed the euro crisis, over 450,000 mostly younger Spaniards looked for work abroad, more than double the number of people coming in. That soon changed. By 2019, the eve of the pandemic, Spain received 666,000 migrants. In both 2022 and 2023, some 1.1 million arrived.

This isn’t generating as much friction as elsewhere, as Spain has plenty of work to offer them. Falling birth rates, a global phenomenon, are particularly severe, just 1.19 babies per woman last year (compared to 1.66 in the US). Migration should give the economy fuel to grow that it would otherwise lack. But the lesson for others may be that it works best if newcomers can assimilate without serious cultural conflict.Energy

There’s another theme where Spain appears to be the antithesis of America. It now gets some 77% of its energy from alternative sources — mostly wind and solar, but also nuclear. The transition has advanced further than anywhere else in Europe, with a goal of 100% of electricity coming from clean energy by 2050.

This plays to natural advantages of a warm, sunny climate and a long coastline. It also helps to deal with the disadvantage of being a long distance from big petroleum exporting countries, such as Russia. Given Spain’s lack of fossil fuels, clean energy appeals much more than in the US. It’s taken as read that 1) climate change is a serious issue, and 2) investment in new energy can boost the economy.

Critics of alternative energy took heart in April, when much of the Iberian peninsula suffered a 19-hour total blackout. It’s hard to blame it solely on renewables, although the 182-page government report released this week signally failed to answer all the questions. The collapse appears to have arisen from connectivity problems with the national grid, rather than any specific issue with the clean energy components. As with migration, the blackout leaves Spain as a key test laboratory for a globally contentious policy — energy transition. Keeping It GoingTo succeed, Spain must build the extra houses it needs, reverse underinvestment in its grid, and demonstrate that allowing in a migrant workforce can deliver benefits for everyone. It’s out on the limb in other ways — such as being at odds with the rest of the EU over NATO’s plan to increase arms spending to 5% of GDP; in 2024, only 1.28% went on defense.

The government is dealing with a corruption scandal, but has time on its side as the next election isn’t due until 2027. However, any of these issues has the potential to erase the thin numbers that have kept Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in office.

So far the protests, while eye-catching, haven’t been so big. In Barcelona, a crowd of only about 600 massed outside Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, far fewer than expected. La Vangaurdia reported that one of the few times police needed to get involved was in rescuing a tourist. Protesters were shouting “Nazis out!” They were infuriated by his MAGA hat.

Source: Bloomberg Europe

The World Bank has asked developing countries to fully disclose their debts and thus steer clear of any future crises.

In a Friday report, the bank called for “radical” transparency among developing countries, aiming to expand the scope and clarity of disclosures around new loans.

Axel van Trotsenburg, senior managing director at the bank, even commented:

When hidden debt surfaces, financing dries up and terms worsen. Radical debt transparency, which makes timely and reliable information accessible, is fundamental to break the cycle.

World Bank wants countries to increase audits and reveal details on their loans

The World Bank insists that countries institute legal frameworks that compel transparency in loan contracting and ensure the disclosure of more granular debt information. The institution also wants nations to normalize audits and public disclosure of debt restructuring terms, and asks lenders to reveal the details of their loans and guarantees.

It also urges countries to adopt improved tools that help international financial institutions identify cases of misreporting.

For some time now, the World Bank and other multilateral banks have been pushing for increased transparency, and their efforts may have encouraged countries to step up.

While under 60% of low-income countries disclosed debt data in 2020, the figure has since risen to more than 75%. Only 25% reveal loan-level data, and multiple countries have resorted to central bank swaps and collateralized transactions that make it challenging to report data.

For starters, Senegal has relied on private debt placements as it works through discussions with the IMF concerning previous debt misreporting. Similarly, Cameroon and Gabon have resorted to “off-screen” deals, and Angola was forced to cover a $200 million margin call following a sharp decline in its bond prices.

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s central bank revealed in early 2023 that a significant portion of its foreign exchange reserves—worth billions of dollars—had been locked into complex financial agreements.

World Bank says FDI has dropped to its lowest level since 2005

The bank noted that developing economies have seen the weakest levels of foreign direct investment since 2005, as trade and investment barriers continue to grow.

In 2023, developing nations attracted just $435 billion in foreign direct investment—their lowest inflow since 2005—while high-income countries saw only $336 billion, marking the lowest since 1996.

Indermit Gill, the bank’s Group Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, believes it’s not by chance that FDI inflows slowed at the same time as public debt rose to record levels. He argued that several governments have been instituting trade and investment barriers in the last few years instead of disbanding them, calling for a change in action.

Governments and some financial and civil society institutions agreed to have their representatives meet from June 30 to July 3 in Seville, Spain, to discuss strategies to put together finances to achieve key global and national development goals.

Some have suggested the reduction of investment restrictions, seeing that about 50% of government FDI measures introduced in developing nations since 2010 have been restrictive. The bank’s analysis also shows that expediting investment projects would help raise FDI inflows.

Ayhan Kose, the Deputy Chief Economist and Director of the Prospects Group at the bank, believes that a rise in FDI is critical for more employment opportunities, a steady growth rate, and to facilitate development. He added that countries need to enact bold domestic reforms to improve the business climate and decisive global cooperation to revive cross-border investment.

Source: CryptoSlate

Climate change is likely intensifying the heat wave scorching the UK, increasing temperatures by as much as 4C (7.2F), according to new research.

High pressure over the UK, along with a stream of air that is rapidly warming as it descends from over Greenland, will bring highs of 33C to London on Saturday, with 34C for parts of eastern England, Met Office forecasts show.

Global warming has increased the chances of an early season heat wave in the UK from once every 50 years in a pre-industrial climate to every five years, according to analysis published Friday by a team of researchers at Imperial College London and the World Weather Attribution group.

“This means, essentially that what would’ve been already a warm, sunny period has been now classed as a heat wave,” said Friederike Otto, an Imperial College climate scientist who was part of the research team.

UK health authorities have issued amber heat alerts, warning that high temperatures could disrupt transport and trigger health emergencies among vulnerable people. The London Fire Brigade has issued a wildfire warning ahead of the weekend, when it expects the public to flock to open spaces that pose fire risks.

The UK Met Office forecasts uncomfortably hot and sleepless nights and stifling humidity. It has issued yellow alerts for severe thunderstorms across northern England on Saturday and Sunday, with the risk of flooding and large hail stones.

The heat wave is also hitting continental Europe.

Amber heat alerts have been issued across a wide area of northwestern France, where temperatures could top 37C on Friday and Saturday, according to government forecaster Météo-France.

Local transportation authorities are reducing speed limits on roads in the Alpes-Maritimes, Bouches-du-Rhône and Vaucluse departments to reduce ozone concentrations. Air quality is set to deteriorate as the heat wave progresses, AtmoSud said.

State-owned utility Electricite de France SA has warned that it may be forced to curb nuclear output from June 25 due to the rising temperature of the Rhone river that’s used for cooling some of its reactors, particularly the Bugey power station.

Amber heat alerts have also been issued across Spain, with forecaster AEMET expecting temperatures as high as 40C in some regions on Friday.

Source: Bloomberg Europe