I don’t know about you, but I’m a huge fan of Paradigm Press’ app. I use it every day to read my colleagues’ articles and, of course, check the “likes” on my Rude pieces. That’s the most immediate way I get your feedback on my scribbles.

If you haven’t gotten it yet, you can download it for your iPhone or your Android phone.

Perhaps my favorite feature in the app is the Daily Feed. There, I can follow Matt Badiali as he flies around the Yukon kicking rocks, the madman! Or I can read the various updates that Enrique Abeyta, James Altucher, and Jim Rickards provide every day.

For instance, Jim posted this on Friday:

Europe might have a long cold winter ahead of it. Natural gas prices there are 8 times higher than in the U.S. Meanwhile, inventories are at a 10-year low.

The Strait of Hormuz situation isn’t helping, but the main problem is the EU cut itself off from Russian gas pipelines. For decades, Russia delivered cheap and reliable energy to Europe. That gas powered Europe's industrial rise. After Russia’s justified invasion of Ukraine, EU leaders lost their minds.

Now European industry is shutting down, and leadership apparently has no plan to address the problem. Change can’t come fast enough to Europe.

Amen, Jim. Amen. But why have EU leaders lost their minds? Hold that thought…

Enrique also posted this:

Want to know some SCARY headlines BEFORE they happen? Watch EUROPE. They are going into the winter with the lowest inventories of NATURAL GAS ever. We all read about the heat wave in Europe this summer...now get ready to hear about the blackouts and entire cities freezing. We feel terrible for the people of the EU but this was the result of the decisions of their elected leaders. Meanwhile, AMERICA has plenty of gas to sell them!

“...the result of the decisions of their elected leaders.” Hmmm.

I’m more than happy to trash Europe’s “leaders” when they deserve to be. But ignoring the USG’s role in all this is a bit much for me.

Today, we’re going to get up close and uncomfortable about this.

Gladio to Meet Ya…

On December 12, 1969, at 16:37 Central European Time, a bomb blew up in the Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura on Milan's Piazza Fontana. Seventeen people died, with 88 wounded. Farmers and traders had crowded the bank that Friday to settle their accounts.

The police blamed the anarchists. One of them, a railway worker named Pino Pinelli, “fell” from a 4th floor window at police headquarters 3 days later. Decades of trials followed. The courts eventually pointed at neofascist cells, and at parts of the Italian state that shielded them.

But no one ever served jail time for the massacre.

Then, in 1990, Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti admitted something extraordinary to the Italian parliament. A secret NATO “stay-behind” army, built with CIA help after World War II, had operated in Italy for decades. Its codename was Gladio, from the Latin word for sword.

To be clear, no court ever proved the CIA planted the bombs of those years. But the record proves this: The U.S. Deep State helped build clandestine armed networks inside allied European states, and then hid them from those states' own voters for 40 years.

Like its northern neighbor Germany, Italy wasn't treated as an ally, but as a protectorate to be managed.

That management hasn’t stopped, but the tools have changed.

What a Racket!

Every mafia movie has the scene. A goon in a chalk-striped suit strolls into a shop and admires the merchandise. "Nice place," he says. "Be a shame if something happened to it."

The genius of a protection racket is that the protector and the threat are the same party. You don't pay him to stop the fire. You pay him because he is the fire.

For 80 years, it has outsourced its defense to the United States. That umbrella let Europeans fund lavish welfare states instead of armies. For the politicians and businessmen, it felt like a good deal.

But nobody hands out free umbrellas, especially the CIA. The bill always comes due. The biggest protection payment is now coming in energy.

Decades of the Same Policy

DC’s war on Russo-European energy ties didn't start in 2022.

In 1982, Ronald Reagan sanctioned European firms helping build the Urengoy pipeline from Siberia to West Germany. He feared Europe would become hooked on Soviet gas. Thatcher, Schmidt, and Mitterrand told him, politely, to pound sand. The pipeline got built. Europe could say no then, because it still had options.

I have long written that there’s nothing the United States fears more than cheap Russian gas powering German manufacturers who sell their well-engineered products to the growing Chinese middle class. Then, America becomes obsolete.

It’s important to remember that the American consumer, who is 17.68% of the world’s economy, is currently in charge. If America’s GDP is 26% of world GDP, and consumption is 68% of GDP, America’s consumers are 17.68% of world GDP.

That, and not the U.S. military, is where America gets its real power. Of course, pointing a big gun at the world’s head is the more immediate source of coercion.

Now let’s fast-forward 40 years.

On February 7, 2022, Joke Biden stood beside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and vowed that if Russia invaded Ukraine, Nord Stream 2 was finished. “We will bring an end to it,” he said. A reporter asked how, since Germany controlled the project. “I promise you, we will be able to do it.”

Seven months later, someone blew up both Nord Stream pipelines on the Baltic seabed. Investigators have chased Ukrainian divers, rented yachts, and other assorted fantasies. They even arrested one suspect here in Italy, near Rimini. Officially, the case stays open. Unofficially, ask the old Roman question. Cui bono? Who benefits?

The Numbers

In 2021, Russia supplied 45% of the EU’s gas imports, about 150 billion cubic meters. By 2024, that share had collapsed to 19%. Brussels now plans to eliminate Russian gas imports.

Guess who filled the gap?

America did. The US became the world's largest LNG exporter in 2023. European factories now pay 3x to 4x what American factories pay for gas.

The results were predictable. BASF, the crown jewel of German chemistry, is shrinking at home while building its newest plant in China. Germany's energy-intensive output has fallen by roughly 20% since 2021. Europe is deindustrializing at a frightening pace.

In short, Europe is eating a century’s worth of industrial seed corn and calling the meal a moral victory.

The Deal at the Golf Course

Then came July 2025.

President Trump and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a trade deal (The Donald’s phrasing, not mine) at his Scottish golf resort. The EU accepted a 15% tariff on most of its exports to America. The bloc also pledged to buy $750 billion of American energy through 2028 and to invest another $600 billion in the US.

Let’s run the math on that. The US sold the EU about $70 billion of energy in 2024. Hitting the $750 billion target means $250 billion a year, more than 3x the current pace. Analysts on both continents call it impossible. Of course, Brussels signed the asinine deal anyway.

Why would a bloc of 450 million people, with an economy near America's size, sign a deal like that? Von der Leyen answered the question herself. Europe needed America engaged in Ukraine, NATO, and under the defense umbrella. In short, because Europe is America’s vassal, and a vassal pays tribute to its overlord.

“Nice export sector you've got there. Be a shame if something happened to it,” was the implied threat.

It’s about money and guns, as it always is.

EU Leaders Fold Like Deck Chairs

Merz, Macron, and von der Leyen are prisoners of their incentives.

A European leader’s survival depends only on the small selectorate that keeps him in power. Right now, that’s his party, coalition, which way the wind blows in Brussels, his CIA handler, and the security guarantee that holds the whole thing together. It has nothing to do with some factory in East Sausageburg.

If he defies DC, he risks the umbrella, intelligence sharing, and his seat at the top of his government. If he obeys, only his industry suffers. Of course, Ze Germans in Lower Saxony just voted for AfD, so they’re getting tired of their industries suffering.

But for now, Europe pays. It pays in tariffs, energy premiums, and factories crossing the Atlantic.

Wrap Up

The “spontaneous” energy divorce between Europe and Russia wasn't spontaneous. DC fought that marriage for 40 years, said so in public, and now collects the profits through LNG contracts, tariff revenue, and European plants relocating to Texas and Louisiana.

The trade follows the racket. American energy exporters, pipelines, and LNG terminal builders sit on the receiving end of a captive customer. For now.

Protection rackets run until the client realizes the protector needs him more than he needs the protector. When Europe finally does its own math, and it inevitably will, the dollar system will lose its best customer.

Rome ran protectorates too. The provinces kept paying tribute for legions that, near the end, never came. History guides us, once again.

Have a great day ahead.