Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, has announced that the digital euro will be ready for October 2025.

However, she stressed the importance of moving forward with the legislative process that would impose the digital euro, urging the European Commission, the European Council, and member states parliaments to accelerate the laws and directives that are required to make the digital euro viable.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow model projection for real GDP growth in the first quarter of 2025 (Q1 2025) is now showing a slump to -1.5%. This marks a significant downward revision from the previous estimate of 2.3% on February 19, 2025.

Such an enormous decline is strange. How did we go from +2.3% to -1.5% in less than a month? That kind of collapse in an economy as large as the United States is exceedingly rare.

The immediate reaction from the media is to call this the beginning of a “Trump recession” and blame it on President Trump’s policies. Interestingly, on June 1, 2022, the Atlanta Fed GDPNow estimated the second quarter of 2022 growth at +1.3%. By July 1, 2022, it had dropped to -2.1%, a shift of 3.4 percentage points in 30 days. What did the media call it? “Growth scare”. A similar thing happened in the third quarter of 2021. The estimate fell from 6.1% (July 30) to 2.3% (October 1), a 3.8-point drop over two months.

When we talk about the war in Ukraine, I agree with supporting the invaded country. Let my position be clear. However, to understand President Trump’s position, we must remember several factors.

First: The war has stalled, and Russia is advancing, even if I don’t like it. By early 2025, the Russian army controlled about 18% of Ukraine’s territory. It added 1,500 square miles over the course of 2024, almost twice the size of London.

Second: Sanctions against Russia have failed. I was the first to defend them, but I warned that if Asia didn’t join, they would fail. Between 2022 and 2024, Russia’s trade surplus has reached over $600 billion. Russian products are exported all over the world and in many cases, they are sold in the European Union via China or India.