 Oil at $126, PMI Rising, and Big Tech Spending $725 Billion on AI — What's Happening to the Economy? Saturday breakdown of the week's key figures. Manufacturing holds steady. ISM Manufacturing PMI in the US — 52.7 for the fourth consecutive month. Not growth, but not a decline either. New orders are stable. Canada even posted 53.3 — the best result since June 2022 after March's 50.0. The North American industrial sector feels confident. Oil storm. Brent touched $126 intraday amid the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Currently, WTI has retreated to $101 — hopes for a US-Iran truce have cooled the market. But fragility remains: any escalation — and we're back at $120+. Yen under protection. The Bank of Japan, apparently, conducted another intervention — the yen stabilized at 156.5/$. The question is not how much more reserves they can spend, but when the Fed will cut rates and relieve pressure. UK mortgages rise. 63,531 approvals in March — above forecasts, the highest since the start of the year. The UK housing market is reviving despite high rates. The main event — AI race. Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon have allocated $725 billion in CAPEX for 2026. This is not just "a lot" — it's a restructuring of the entire infrastructure. Every dollar of these $725 billion will go into data centers, chips, and energy. What does this mean for us? Geopolitics creates volatility, but fundamentally the economy continues to grow. And Big Tech's investments in AI signal that the next decade will be defined not by oil, but by computing. https://asibiont.com/