06 Market

Blurb:

From CNN. “The American Psychiatric Association announced Wednesday that it is radically reconceptualizing the main manual that clinicians use to make a mental health diagnosis. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders will likely get a new name, new voices shaping its content and a new approach that will add more layers to a diagnosis.

The hope is that it will turn what some call “psychiatry’s bible” into more of a guidebook to mental health disorders — one that’s more inclusive, dynamic and educational, so patients will receive more effective treatments.

While APA updates the manual regularly to reflect the most up-to-date science, the last update was 2022. Over the years, the DSM has come under heavy criticism. Some argue it’s not scientific enough, others argue it’s not specific enough, or even practical.

Blurb:

Chinese businesses have pledged hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of investment in the U.K. and struck new partnerships with British peers as Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s visit to China spurred a flurry of bilateral business activity and investment flows.

During his four-day visit in China last week, Starmer met Chinese President Xi Jinping and secured deals that would see hundreds of millions worth of new investments from Chinese businesses, in addition to £2.2 billion ($3 billion) worth of exports and £2.3 billion in market access, according to a statement from the prime minister’s office.

Following the high-profile visit, the two leaders hailed the benefits of cooperation, with Xi describing the bilateral ties as “mutually beneficial.” Starmer, who brought a large delegation of executives from banking, pharmaceutical, and automobile companies to China, also described the country as vital to Britain’s interests.

Blurb:

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is scrambling to walk back his China pivot after President Donald Trump threatened to hammer Canada with massive tariffs if Ottawa turns itself into a trade conduit for Beijing.

Carney now insists Canada has “no intention” of pursuing a free trade deal with the Chinese Communist Party.

It comes just days after President Trump warned that any such move would trigger a 100% tariff on Canadian exports entering the United States.

The sudden reversal follows a series of events that exposed Canada’s quiet but aggressive realignment toward Beijing.

Blurb:

PARIS: French lawmakers on Monday (Jan 26) were set to vote on draft legislation to ban social media for under-15s, an effort championed by President Emmanuel Macron as a way to protect children from excessive screen time.

The legislation, which also provides for a ban on mobile phones in high schools, follows Australia banning social media for under-16s in December, a world first.

As social media has grown around the world, so has concern that too much screen time is arresting child development and contributing to declining mental health in minors.

“The emotions of our children and teenagers are not for sale or to be manipulated, either by American platforms or Chinese algorithms,” Macron said in a video broadcast on Saturday.

Blurb:

 

 

The U.S. and Taiwan recently reached a historic trade deal. Taiwanese companies will invest at least $250 billion in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest chipmaker, pledged $100 billion in U.S. investment in 2025. Taipei will provide an additional $250 billion in credit guarantees to Taiwanese companies.

Blurb:

Inflation rose one-tenth of a percentage point to 2.8% for the year ending in November 2025, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday in an update to the personal consumption expenditures index, which is the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge.

Thursday’s report is the last the Fed will receive before it votes on interest rates next week.

Thursday’s report includes data for both October and November, unusually, because the government shutdown prevented the scheduled release of key economic reports.

Blurb:

Surprise medical bills have bludgeoned most Americans. In fact, about half of insured Americans face unexpected charges every year. In 2020, Congress passed the No Surprises Act, which banned out-of-network billing rates for some services. It also entitled patients who aren’t using health insurance to a “good faith estimate” of out-of-pocket costs before receiving care. But there’s a catch that stacks the deck against patients and taxpayers: final bills within $400 of the original estimate are legally collectible.

After stinging GOP losses in November, health care “affordability” is all the rage. Voters are frustrated that every other medical appointment brings another unexpected charge and an inevitable battle of wills and wits with the billing department. Christopher Jacobs recently opined in these pages that “Republicans should stop playing into Democrats’ hands and start … reducing the underlying cost of health care.”

Blurb:

Seventeen House Republicans gave California Democrats a late Christmas present this month when they crossed the aisle to vote for extending enhanced Obamacare premium subsidies for another three years.

Not only did they move these massive handouts one step closer to permanent entitlement status, but they failed to advance reforms that would actually lower health care costs, like closing the Intergovernmental Transfer loophole that has cost taxpayers tens of billions over time.

The Senate should stop this bill in its tracks and—in anticipation of pushback from those who have never seen a government expansion they didn’t like—prepare to argue to the public why propping up a broken system won’t reduce health insurance premiums. As I argued in The Hill, these subsidies just mask the true cost of government distortion.

Blurb:

U.S. President Donald Trump suggested Friday that he may punish countries with tariffs if they don’t back the U.S. controlling Greenland, a message that came as a bipartisan Congressional delegation sought to lower tensions in the Danish capital.

Trump for months has insisted that the U.S. should control Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, and said earlier this week that anything less than the Arctic island being in U.S. hands would be “unacceptable.”

During an unrelated event at the White House about rural health care, he recounted Friday how he had threatened European allies with tariffs on pharmaceuticals.

Blurb:

Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman.

Over the past couple of weeks oil—specifically, Venezuelan oil—has been all over the headlines.

It started late on January 2, when President Donald Trump ordered U.S. military forces to enter Venezuela and capture the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, which they did early the next morning. Last week the country’s interior minister said the action killed 100 people.

Blurb:

New public records reveal that large volumes of U.S. currency from Mexico entered the Federal Reserve system in 2024 and 2025 through a foreign bank access program operating outside routine U.S. bank supervision.

According to Mexico Business Daily, bank disclosures, regulatory filings, and media reports show that Banco Azteca, a Mexican retail bank that previously lost U.S. correspondent banking relationships, routed bulk U.S. currency through Moneycorp Bank Limited.

Moneycorp is a Gibraltar-based financial institution with direct access to Federal Reserve cash services.

Blurb:

Sales by U.S. retailers rose by much more than expected in November, signaling that the household sector remains resilient and consumer spending continues to support rapid economic growth.

Retail spending rose 0.6 percent in November, exceeding even the most optimistic estimates. Analysts surveyed by Econoday expected sales to rise by around 0.2 percent, with estimates ranging from a decline of 0.5 percent to a gain of 0.4 percent.

Since the start of the year through November, sales are up 3.7 percent compared with the first 11 months of the prior year. During that period, consumer prices rose by around 2.7 percent, implying that real sales were up by one percent.

Blurb:

More and more people have been experiencing psychosis induced by AI chatbot use. This is concerning since chatbot use is so prevalent, especially among young people and those who are in distress and vulnerable (one recent study found that about a quarter of young adults used chatbots specifically for mental health advice).

Reassuringly, psychiatry’s stance is that anyone who experiences this was already “prone to psychosis”—that the chatbot simply triggered delusions that would have been triggered some other way. Yet there is no evidence to support this explanation, and the case reports of those who have experienced AI psychosis tell a different story.