Warren Buffett sounds warning to Washington as Berkshire reports record profit

Maybe it's me but that actually doesn't sound very corporate at all. Sounds very Godfather.

Not to mention Germany's in a third consecutive year of economic recession and facing an election were the extreme right is sure to make big gains (again). Government policy has already taken a sharp-right turn (which is not good for the economy) and it's likely to do so again after the elections. It's close to being in the same situation as Russia was in 2022, where war would actually help it's economy. Frankly the population has turned every more to the right for a decade now.

UK ... well, there's the Brexit mess, and UK MAY be exiting a 1.5 year long recession (numbers "look good", in the sense that it's no longer getting worse, but a serious hickup can still make this a 2 year long recession)

France was pretty close to an extreme-right takeover (which was entirely Macron's fault, with his "elect either me or Le Hitler" ploy that he has used 4 times now and every time he uses it, it gets Le Pen closer to the presidency), and has taken a hard-right turn in policies. In this environment, parliament kicked out the government and, frankly, they're being SO stupid that it actually makes Macron look good. However, it is at least not in recession, but it's certainly going through a deep downturn.

Italy WAS taken over by the extreme-right, and has been in a crisis for decades (also before Meloni, she's a symptom, not a cause. Also not making things better).

Poland is an actual bona fide bright spot in this environment.

Spain, Portugal, Greece, Romania, Hungary ... are not.

Then there's Ukraine ... whilst perhaps not directly disrupting Western European economies, it's certainly not a positive. War, maybe constant war, has now returned to Europe. And of course, Kosovo recently felt the need to remind everyone that though the war ended, things are not resolved. And in Georgia, and the Baltic states, as well as the Polish border and Finland Putin is reminding everyone that he won't be done after the Ukraine war.

Meanwhile the EU itself seems to be disintegrating. Frankly EU cohesion has taken a sharp downturn since the EU constitution disaster. Even the Shengen treaty is falling apart. It is also making a sharp right turn and now you can find headlines that "the EU commission is turning authoritarian".

Makes you think that one, most European politicians are seriously denying economic reality ... and second maybe that the rise of the right and the failure of economic policy in the last decade is not a coincidence.

For instance, not just make offhand comments about taxation, but form a political group that pushes for higher taxes the same way other shadowy political groups push against them.