Bulgaria’s tax and social-insurance burden on labor reached about 42% of gross wages in 2025 and is projected to rise to 44% in 2026 and 46% in 2027, mainly due to a planned 2-point increase in social security contributions, according to the Institute for Market Economics (IME).

Health and pension systems remain underfunded despite rising spending. The National Social Security Institute (NSSI) estimates the pension system would need a 37.5% contribution rate to break even—far above the current 16.3%. If gaps were closed solely through higher contributions, the total insurance burden could hit 45.5%, meaning over half of workers’ earnings would go to the state once income tax is included. Economists warn this would push more activity into the informal economy and risk job losses.

The NSSI argues that sustainability requires tightening early-retirement options, boosting employment, and supporting income growth, not raising taxes—yet these steps are absent from the 2026 draft budget.

The IME proposes an alternative plan:

Cap national spending at 38% of GDP to prevent tax hikes and new debt.

Limit public debt to 30% of GDP to avoid trends seen in countries like Romania.

Overall, economists warn that higher social-security contributions will depress Bulgaria's economic growth and living standards.

The sabotage taken on Hungary's infrastructure in October is going to cost insurers $461m. Insurance companies in Hungary are already processing over $4bn in claims this year alone.

To expand on yesterday's tokenisation and digital ID/currency posts, you may be interested to learn that amongst other things, gold is also being actively tokenised right now (Tether Gold, PAXG, BlackRock’s new gold-backed funds, FCA sandbox pilots in 2025 etc)

This is because the end-game is to turn every physical and financial asset into a digital token that can be used as collateral for new money creation—govt debt, land, private credit, carbon credits, fine art, infrastructure projects, biodiversity offsets, you name it, it's going to get tokenised

When they’ve tokenised everything physical (property, gilts, corporate bonds etc), I suspect they’ll want the private gold too. History shows they’re perfectly willing to force a turn-in at a fixed (lower) price and then revalue it upwards afterwards (US did exactly that in 1933). If you refuse, the most likely outcome will simply be that you won’t be able to sell your gold legally or use it in the new digital financial system. Same result, quieter execution

But this is all just the warm-up imho. Another plan is Human Capital Contracts (HCCs) – the final, infinite collateral layer to keep the debt-based money system alive forever. Digitally

Such contracts are already in late-stage regulatory sandbox and pilots (US: Lambda/Bloom, Purdue ISA; Singapore: Yield App; UK Treasury exploring for student finance and business loans via income-linked models)

They want HCCs to work like this:

You want a house deposit, a degree, medical treatment, or to start a business so a lender (bank or fintech) will run an algorithm over your digital ID, health records, education history, work record, even social-media patterns to spit out your predicted lifetime earnings curve

The lender then offers you £50 k–£500 k upfront in exchange for 4–18 % of your gross future income – often for 25–40 years, sometimes for life, sometimes until you’ve paid 2–3× back, whichever comes last

The contract for such loan is tokenised on a blockchain and bundled into pools of similar loans and sold on to special purpose vehicles (SPVs) etc.Those pools will be used as collateral by regulated stablecoin issuers to mint new digital money 1:1. So £100 million of human-capital tokens → £100 million of new stablecoins → lent out again to create the next round of HCCs

This is the same exponential debt-money loop, just with people instead of houses as the collateral and the money being digital rather than paper

Smart contracts + digital ID + Open Banking (and later retail CBDC) make repayment automatic: the agreed percentage is deducted at source before you ever see your salary

No default is possible, no bankruptcy discharge, no negotiation

This model is already being suggested for student finance, first-time-buyer “equity” schemes, business start-up loans, and private medical funding

Mortgages will follow as hybrid products (part fixed loan, part lifetime income share)

Wholesale CBDC will give banks unlimited settlement liquidity so the machine never jams on this

Retail CBDC (the digital pound in your wallet) will add the programmable enforcement: the money itself can carry the HCC terms, auto-routing your percentage, and in the future it can be geo-fenced, restricted, or switched off for non-compliance to whatever it's decided you need to comply to

The satanic system has to do this to survive, because the old collateral (houses, bonds, land) is fully tapped out and the interest on existing debt now exceeds the amount of new debt ordinary humans can take on to pay back said interest on old debt

Hence, the only thing left with decades of untapped borrowing capacity is future labour and tokenisation of all assets

So they will tokenise everything – gold, land, infrastructure, your lifetime earnings, eventually air, water, carbon, fertility – anything that can be assigned a value and turned into a cryptographic token becomes collateral for new interest-bearing digital money to perpetuate the current debt based system, in digital form, for ultimate control

Two emerging conspiracies on the endgame of the financial system. Not necessarily exclusive to one another.

"The Federal Reserve and other central banks face an insoluble trilemma. Raising rates to combat inflation risks recession. Cutting rates to support growth risks entrenching inflation. Maintaining current policy produces stagflation—simultaneous inflation and stagnation.

Historical precedent from the 1970s suggests the least-bad option involves accepting recession to break inflation expectations, but political economy constraints make this path extraordinarily difficult. The unemployment-inflation trade-off, as captured by the Phillips Curve, breaks down under supply shocks because the inflation is cost-push rather than demand-pull. Monetary policy tools designed for demand management prove ineffective or counterproductive.

Fiscal policy options are similarly constrained. Fuel subsidies prevent price signals from inducing conservation but blow massive holes in government budgets. Strategic reserve releases provide temporary relief but deplete the very buffer needed for future crises. Windfall profit taxes on energy companies reduce investment further, exacerbating the supply problem.

The socially optimal response—massive government-backed investment in new energy supply combined with demand management through efficiency mandates and temporary rationing—is politically unpalatable and practically complex. It requires acknowledging that current energy system architecture is insufficient, that the energy transition timeline is too slow, and that near-term fossil fuel investment remains necessary despite long-term decarbonization goals."

https://substack.com/home/post/p-179721872

🇲🇪🇷🇺 - Montenegro selected late September 2026 as the deadline for introduction of entry visas for Russian nationals, who used to enjoy visa-free access previously.

Thursday is a big day for many countries. An otherwise tepid holiday for the United States could be a boon for American Wall Street, Russian - Ukranian relations and many European countries.

Everyone is hyping up this event - but the underlying theme is that some sort of resolution must occur; if not tomorrow in the near future.

Tens of millions of lives have been upended in a war that has been going for over 12 years now.

The migrant centers being built in Albania, Montenegro and possibly Kosovo are a legal loophole to this.

Tuesday, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said Belgrade would give the Russian owners of NIS - Gazprom Neft (SIBN.MM), and Gazprom (GAZP.MM) - 50 days to sell their stake in NIS or the government would take over operations and make an offer to buy them out. The government is preparing an amendment to the countrys budget law to allow nationalization.

Vucic and his energy minister said Serbia would have to secure an operational licence from OFAC by the end of Wednesday to keep the NIS refinery operational.

The U.S. has waived sanctions against NIS several times since the Trump administration included the company in its long list of sanctioned companies. However, the situation has now become tenuous after banks stopped processing NIS payments after the last U.S. waiver expired on October 8, while Croatia's JANAF pipeline stopped delivering crude to the refinery.

Hungary has pledged increased 2.5x supplies for December but stated that it cannot cover all of Serbia's crude oil needs by itself.

Croatia Airlines has called an extraordinary general meeting for 29 December to approve a €43 million share-capital increase. The move would convert existing government loan claims from 2020—totalling about €43 million—into new airline shares, raising overall share capital to €135.38 million. The Croatian government, already the dominant shareholder, will participate as the sole investor, with other shareholders excluded. The recapitalisation supports the carrier’s ongoing fleet-modernisation programme.

The government enriches itself on paper by creating arbitrary profits out of loans.

Bulgaria’s government will give 120 leva ($71) Christmas bonuses to all pensioners whose incomes fall below the 638-leva ($378) poverty line, Labour and Social Policy Minister Borislav Gutsanov announced on November 26. The measure will cost about 64 million ($37m) leva and benefit roughly 536,000 people.

The decision reverses earlier statements that no bonuses would be paid this year, following a proposal by GERB-UDF leader Boiko Borissov. Parliament has also tasked the Labour Ministry with drafting legislation to ensure future Christmas and Easter bonuses for vulnerable groups, including pensioners and low-income families.

32% of Bulgarian's income goes to Social Security and Healthcare insurance. Despite that all they could find for the poorest elderly was $71.

Thanksgiving passed in the U.S., the Russia-Ukraine war and sanctions continue, Serbia is scrambling to recalibrate its nationalization tools, and Orbán is in Moscow meeting with Putin today.

Croatia’s government has moved to dismiss the CEOs of ACI and four other major state-owned companies—Hrvatska Posta, HZ Infrastruktura, Hrvatska Lutrija, and Odasiljaci i Veze—while also removing the heads of the state inspectorate and the health insurance fund; no reason was given for the dismissals.

Over 20,000 protestors in Bulgaria due to new steep tax increases yesterday in Sofia where 46% of one's paycheck will be taxed.

Hungary's booming $1 billion movie industry, dubbed "Hollywood on the Danube," may soon face a major setback if US President Donald Trump enforces a proposed 100% tariff on foreign-produced films. Hungary's labor cost, stunning locations, and generous rebates have attracted numerous foreign productions, from blockbuster sci-fi like Dune to award-winning period dramas.

In 2023, foreign film spending in Hungary hit a record $910 million, mainly from US productions. However, Trump's tariffs, aimed at revitalizing the struggling US film industry, could harm Hungary’s lucrative film services. Experts suggest that Hollywood may find workarounds, but the tariffs could still disrupt the flow of productions.
In addition, Hungary’s film rebate program, which reimburses 30% of local spending, faces uncertainty after the government suspended new registrations in June.