DB Megatrends: AI vs the Decade's Structural Headwinds — Six-Megatrend Aggregate at 1970s/2008 Lows, Haven Asset Regime Change
DB's megatrend aggregate sits at 1970s/2008 lows, four of six trends deeply negative, and their headline binary — AI productivity boom or severe prolonged downturn — is the rhetorical compression sell-side reaches for when consensus is still forming; their own scenario charts show three lines. Two findings buried under that framing deserve more attention: M&A correlation with megatrends went from near zero during ZIRP to 25-30% now, and traditional havens failed in four consecutive major risk-off events since 2020. The scenario nobody is modeling is the middle one — AI real, productivity capture uneven, fiscal dominance partial — and that's where every corporate treasury policy and institutional hedge structure is quietly becoming obsolete.