The very wealthy are still spending; everyone else is struggling. That split is now evident all over. AI firms are booming; most aren't. Moreover, a day after the Financial Times spoke of people looking for "crumbs" in parts of the US, it happily reports 'Megadeals hit new record as Wall Street's animal spirits roar back.' That will please the crumb-seekers.

It's there in budgets too. Brussels just rebuked Finland for breaching EU budget rules: if even the Scandies are naughty, as they rearm aggressively, then who isn't? The UK saw what the Telegraph calls 'A Budget of chaos, contradiction and falsehoods', as the Guardian noted "Rachel Reeves targets UK's wealthiest in £26bn tax-raising budget", and the FT said it "raises the UK tax take to an all-time high." Our Stefan Koopman argues it has little aimed at boosting growth, encouraging investment, restoring confidence, or reforming the tax system, and is instead "a Survival Budget instead of a Growth Budget, crafted to appease both backbench MPs and financial markets." Yet fiddling with CPI may be enough for a divided BOE to cut a little more.

A K-shape is evident in the Fed as well. Miran makes clear he wants to do things very differently. So does Bessent. Cook's fate is in the balance. Powell's Miran-esque replacement may be named in weeks. This goes beyond Fed Funds. Potentially, it's also about US (geo)political economy.

Even the FT just had to admit global trade is also now a 'K'. Its op-ed , 'China is making trade impossible', argues, "There is nothing that China wants to import, nothing it does not believe it can make better and cheaper, nothing for which it wants to rely on foreigners a single day longer than it has to." It adds what China imports, because it must, it also intends to make soon and dominate global supply of. In short, Ricardian comparative advantage is gone; China makes 'port' and 'cloth', and China will eventually dominate all key global industries. Those who read Ricardo, Chinese history, Marxism-Leninism, and neomercantilism warned about this years ago, and how it would lead to the collapse of the (neo)liberal world order - as a US commission warns China seeks an "alternative world order." Yet 'because markets' types were all 'O'-shaped: mouths agape, intellectually in a closed loop. So, here we are.

The FT op-ed concludes the EU must embrace protectionism if it wants to retain any industry as, "Europe has nothing to offer and difficult decisions to make". It's already heading in that direction slowly, grudgingly, blaming Trump, and still thinking it will be able to remain a net exporter as it happens, which it likely won't. It goes without saying that Europe is K-shaped on that key front, within lobby groups in each member state, and between them - and Brussels.