Does Leopold Have Situational Awareness?

More from Patrick Boyle On Finance All episodes →

1. 

   S6 · E37 · 13 Sep 2026 · 31 min

   Why Germany Stopped Working

   Germany just freed up half a trillion euros to rebuild itself — and eighteen months later, the money has barely moved. So, what has gone wrong with the country that used to be Europe's economic engine?Everyone has a favourite villain: the end of cheap Russian gas, Chinese competition, Trump's tariffs. But none of them explains why a town outside Berlin can't spend two million euros to resurface a road, even after the cash has been handed over. In this video I look at the real problem underneath Germany's economic stall — a system so built around caution and consensus that it can't move, even…

2. 

   S6 · E36 · 5 Sep 2026 · 34 min

   The Social Reckoning That Wasn't

   Last month Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion dollars to settle claims that it knowingly harmed teenagers — a number the press immediately called Big Tech's "tobacco moment." Wall Street responded by sending the stock up.In this video I read the actual 130-page consent judgment so that you don't have to, and work out what Meta really bought for its money. It turns out the headline figure is worth about two days of revenue, the "new" safety rules are mostly settings Meta had already written for itself, and the fine print lands rather more heavily on TikTok than on Meta. We'll also get into…

3. 

   S6 · E35 · 30 Aug 2026 · 45 min

   Scott Bessent Is at War With Prices — and Prices Are Winning!

   Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is trying to force down US Treasury yields with surprise bond buybacks — and it isn't working. In this video we break down Bessent's activist debt management strategy, why doubling the Treasury's long-dated buybacks is a bet on falling interest rates funded by short-term bills, and why his old boss Stanley Druckenmiller publicly tore the plan apart in a Wall Street Journal op-ed ("Let the Bond Market Speak"). We look at the collision with new Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh after Jackson Hole, the 50% tariffs on Canada and the Mark Carney feud, "Operation…

4. 

   S6 · E34 · 23 Aug 2026 · 36 min

   How Much Would an AI Crash Destroy?

   Two chip stocks recently drove seventeen percent of the entire global stock market's return in a single month — which tells you just how concentrated the AI trade has become, and how exposed the average investor now is without realising it. In this video we look at how much wealth an AI crash could actually destroy, with estimates from Dean Baker, former IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath, and Oliver Wyman running into the tens of trillions of dollars. We cover why the usual places to hide — small caps, value funds, international stocks — are now packed with AI stocks, what the Bank for…

5. 

   S6 · E33 · 15 Aug 2026 · 32 min

   The Hidden Risk in the US-Japan Yen Rescue

   In July 2026, the US Treasury did something it hadn't done since 1998: it intervened in the currency markets to prop up the Japanese yen — and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a former Soros hedge fund manager, ran the trade in the strangest way possible, selling euros instead of dollars without telling the ECB. But this was never really about Japan. It was about protecting American borrowing costs at a moment when the US is paying more to borrow than it has in decades — with 30-year Treasury yields hitting their highest since 2001. This video breaks down the US-Japan yen intervention, the…

6. 

   S6 · E31 · 4 Aug 2026 · 32 min

   Big Tech's Hidden Debt Problem

   Nikkei Asia recently reported that the five biggest US tech companies are carrying an estimated $1.65 trillion in "hidden," off-balance-sheet debt — and a lot of commentators have reached for the word "Enron" to describe the issue. In this video I look at whether that comparison holds up. It doesn't: unlike Enron, this debt isn't concealed through fraud — it's disclosed in the footnotes, it breaks no accounting rules, and much of what is going on is perfectly ordinary. But that raises a more interesting question than "will they get caught." If the aggressive stuff — the adjusted earnings,…

7. 

   S6 · E30 · 27 Jul 2026 · 38 min

   Where is Venezuela’s oil money?

   When the United States took control of Venezuela's oil exports in early 2026, it collected an estimated $13 billion in crude sales — but the official ledger in Caracas records almost none of it, and six months on there is still no public accounting of where the money went. In this video we look at what happened to Venezuela's sovereign wealth: the missing oil revenues now sitting in an offshore account in Qatar, the four billion dollars of Venezuelan gold frozen in the vaults of the Bank of England that no one can legally claim, and the court-ordered auction that handed Citgo's parent…

8. 

   S6 · E30 · 19 Jul 2026 · 37 min

   The World's Best Stock Market Is Also Crashing!

   South Korea has the best performing stock market in the world for the second year running — and it's also in the middle of one of the worst bear markets on earth. The KOSPI is down around 27% from its June peak, more than 1.2 million retail accounts have been hit with margin calls, and hundreds of thousands of Korean investors have been wiped out entirely. But this isn't a story about meme stocks or worthless companies. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are enormously profitable businesses at the center of the global AI boom, and the traders buying them were right about the trend. In this…

9. 

   S6 · E29 · 12 Jul 2026 · 34 min

   Is Russia Actually Losing?

   Russia's war economy is running out of road. Ukrainian drone strikes have knocked out roughly a third of Russia's oil refining capacity, forcing an energy superpower to ration petrol at home and import gasoline from India — while Crimea sits under a state of emergency with the air-raid sirens switched off so the tourists aren't disturbed. In this video we look at what the numbers actually say: a contracting economy despite record military spending, a National Wealth Fund down from 6.5% of GDP to 1.8%, a first-quarter budget deficit that blew through the entire year's target in ninety days,…

10. 

    S6 · E28 · 5 Jul 2026 · 26 min

    The Real Reason European Cars Can't Compete

    Europe's automotive industry is facing a historic crisis as Volkswagen weighs unprecedented factory closures and massive job cuts. However, the root of the problem isn't just high energy costs or European bureaucracy—it's China Shock 2.0. With Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers building cars significantly faster and for thousands of euros less, traditional German automakers are rapidly losing market share both at home and abroad. This video analyzes the structural trade imbalances flooding the market with subsidized EVs, explains why laying off workers won't solve Volkswagen's…