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Sunday, June 22, 2025

2025-06-22

 **** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)


Economic and Market Fare:

A data-driven analysis cutting through the noise to reveal the current state of the Aggregate Economy.



Summary
  • Trump’s trade war and disengagement from global trade is effectively ‘America's Brexit'.
  • For pound/dollar, ‘America’s Brexit’ will cancel out ‘Britain’s Brexit’.
  • Hence, a new structural position is long pound/dollar with a price target of $1.60.
  • Investors will also switch out of the ‘fiat’ dollar into ‘non-fiat’ gold and bitcoin.
  • But given bitcoin’s market value is less than one tenth that of gold, bitcoin has considerably more upside...
  • ...with our price target at $200,000+
.................... If investors switching out of US dollars do not have to switch into another fiat currency, then the strongest candidate on a multi-year horizon is bitcoin. Indeed, since ‘Liberation Day’ the biggest winner of the dollar exodus has been the world’s preeminent cryptocurrency.

Many investors that I speak with are still uneasy about owning bitcoin. They worry that bitcoin has no ‘intrinsic’ value. Yet these same investors have no qualms owning gold. This makes no sense given that gold has very little intrinsic value either. If gold were valued just on its intrinsic value as a precious metal, then it would be trading closer to $340/oz than its current $3400/oz.

The value of both gold and bitcoin come their so-called ‘network effects’. As I previously explained in Bitcoin Closes In On $100,000, But The Ultimate Destination Is $200,000+ | BCA Research, the network effect arises from the collective belief that gold and bitcoin are the non-confiscatable assets to own in a fiat monetary system. And that a certain proportion of total wealth must be held in these non-confiscatable assets as an insurance against hyperinflation, banking system failure, or government default or expropriation.

The upshot is that the nominal dollar value of the gold and bitcoin networks is the product of three terms:
  1. Global wealth in nominal dollars.
  2. The share of this global wealth held in the non-confiscatable asset-class
  3. The share of the non-confiscatable asset-class held in gold versus bitcoin
The evidence since ‘Liberation Day’ is that investors have lost faith in the dollar as a haven asset. They are fleeing to gold and the Swiss franc but fleeing even more to bitcoin. In which case, all three components of bitcoin’s value are going to trend much higher in the coming months and years. ........ 



Yves here. Most of you will recognize the headline’s nod to the book that propelled John Maynard Keynes to fame, his The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Keynes, who had been an advisor to the UK Treasury team participating Versailles Conference, which was negotiating what amounted to the detailed terms that would be imposed on Germany after World War I. Keynes had had to return to England while the talks were on due to a bout of bad health, and decided to resign because it was clear to him the the settlement would be unduly punitive. His book, which presciently argued that the attempt to impose a Carthaginian peace would backfire, became a best seller.

Note also that this is a heavyweight group of authors that is iproviding an overview to an e-book with contributions from 50 experts. But even this high-level recap seems a bit cautious. It seems loath to clearly say that Trump”s not-well-thought-out fight to prevent or delay the inevitable shift to a multi-polar order is making the transition more painful, and potentially much more bloody, than it need be. .................



............... Put simply, the markets are absolutely not discounting a recession of any consequence. Equity markets are well up, credit spreads are well down and the rates profile shows no signs of macro malaise. Sounds too good to be true? Feels that way. .......



I cannot remember a time in my career when the news has been noisier than it is now. If we are not careful, every headline and associated reaction becomes an opportunity to confirm the narratives that we have already written about the economy and the market. Perspective narrows, objectivity goes out the window and we ricochet off the walls of our echo chambers.

An antidote to this is to listen to the message of the market and let the data tell the story. We are now one month removed from the spike in new 20-day highs in mid-May that produced a breadth thrust signal for the first time since the end of 2023. While the past month has been anything but typical from a news headline perspective, the behavior of the S&P 500 has been consistent with what has been experienced after previous breadth thrusts over the past 40+ years. In fact, the 3% gain in the one month following the May 12, 2025 breadth thrust is somewhat stronger than the median one month gain following the previous 30 breadth thrusts.


The composite path laid out by previous breadth thrusts is up and to the right from here. One wrinkle to consider is that most previous breadth thrusts have come with the S&P 500 already at new 6-month highs. In the current case the S&P 500 has thus far failed to eclipse its early year peak. The bullish case would be bolstered by the S&P 500 eclipsing its February peak. Though (as we discussed shortly after the February peak), a new high in the index that is not accompanied by a robust number of stocks making new highs is not usually followed by strength.


The May breadth thrust suggests the path of resistance is higher, but bulls have some work to do. They have been dealt a good hand, but it still needs to be played. The positive set-up for the bulls begins with an expansion in the number of stocks making new highs and culminates with the S&P 500 breaking out to new highs of its own. A failure on either account cast doubt on the sustainability of the rally off of the April lows.







Vid Fare:

This recent 'raging bear' is now fully long the market




Bubble Fare:


While this isn’t exactly the conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus, I came to a realization recently that subtly changes the way I look at the potential for large cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin.

Historically, my attitude has been dismissive about the value of bitcoin itself. While I recognize the amazing reach of blockchain technology and the genius of using asymmetric key cryptography to secure the public record of private transactions, I’ve always thought that bitcoin didn’t really achieve the promised goal, which was to be a better money than fiat dollars. After all, bitcoin is not backed by anything more than the dollar is – nothing. Its value is based on scarcity, and scarcity by itself is not a source of value (if it was, my toenail clippings would be immensely valuable). So in my 2016 book What’s Wrong with Money? I wrote in a chapter on bitcoin:
“But is bitcoin money? Calling it a virtual currency, or a digital currency, or a crypto-currency doesn’t make it money. At some level, it is of course money in the same sense as cigarettes are to prison inmates. It serves as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account – but only within the special community that already accepts bitcoin as credible…It is not yet broadly a credible currency. It doesn’t have universal value because not everyone believes that everyone else will accept bitcoin.”
Even in that chapter I recognized that bitcoin may someday be money-like. And I underwent a partial conversion and even worked for a while on a paper with my co-authors Kari Walstad and Scott Wald to define a measure (“Crypto Trust Index”) that would objectively measure how much like money the cryptocurrency world was becoming. [That paper ended up being overtaken by real-world developments, as stablecoins fully backed by fiat balances are obviously crypto money by identity, rendering the question moot.]

But in my mind bitcoin, eth, etc aren’t money but speculative vehicles – they are distinctly separate from USDC, USDi, and other fully-backed coins. It may be that they belong in a portfolio with stables and/or securities, but since bitcoin has no intrinsic value I have always held the view that I don’t want to own it as it can go to zero in a nonce.[1]

Recently, as I said, I’ve had a mild conversion as a result of two realizations.

The first realization is that even in the traditional securities world, we sometimes invest in things which have no intrinsic value in many states of the world. ...............

The second realization, though, relates to scarcity. Yes, scarcity alone cannot be the basis for value (see: my toenails). For scarcity to matter, there needs to be exogenous demand. And that demand need not be rational. If someone wants to hold bitcoin, not caring that it has no intrinsic value (or erroneously believing that it has some), then scarcity matters. The realization is that scarcity goes from not mattering at all, to mattering a great deal, as soon as there is any demand. To be sure, if that demand goes away, then scarcity again ceases to matter. ..........

So the case for speculating in bitcoin (no, I won’t call it investing) is that since the total supply is independent of price, the supply curve is vertical and moving to the right at an ever-slower rate. As this happens, it takes less and less increase in demand to push price higher.

It also takes less and less decrease in demand to push price lower. Since there is no slope to the supply curve, it means that oscillations in demand are responsible for all of the oscillations in bitcoin’s price. And we can say more about the volatility dynamics.  ...........



Charts:
1:



(not just) for the ESG crowd (Vid Fare):



Geopolitical Fare:


.......................... It is, of course, obvious that if Iran had nukes, much or most of this would never have happened. North Korean leaders do not worry about being murdered in their sleep by foreign missiles, drones and bombs.

The China Syndrome. All of the materials required to build drones and ballistic missiles are available, cheap, from China. China gets a lot of oil from Iran, uses Iran for transhipment, and is in general a major ally of Iran. It is also aware that taking out Iran is one of the steps before war with it. Just as I said that China would not allow Russia to be taken out by sanctions (and was right), I expect China in the case of any sort of duration of this war, and, indeed, after it, to supply Iran with everything it needs to ramp up production of missiles and drones. Since China’s production abilities exceed those of the West when it comes to these requirements, this is not a small thing.

No Army Means No Fall. Iran cannot be defeated by airpower alone unless there is a significant uprising in the country which the army is unable or unwilling to stop. One should never underestimate the CIA’s regime change abilities, of course, but if they don’t pull it off then this war is about reducing Iran’s power projection ability: doing enough damage that they surrender in spirit if not in fact.

The Khameini Problem. Nations rot from the top, and this is clearly the fundamental problem in Iran. Khameini is cautious, even timid. He has underplayed his hand ever single time during this crisis, most importantly when not sending ground troops to stop the fall of Assad. This caused great problems with the younger members of the Revolutionary Guard, who are hardliners almost to a man. The elimination of senior members of defense and government is not strengthening moderates, it is strengthening hardliners.

Israel has said that Khameini is not off-limits for murder. If they do so, it will be a huge mistake. It will end the non-nuclear fatwa (though the Iraniams will lie about that) and put hardliners in charge. Ironically, the best thing Khameini could do for Iran right now is be Martyred. If Allah Wills It, let it be so. I don’t want to get too down on him, in many ways he’s run Iran very well, but he is a victim of Machiavelli’s dictum that when times change most leaders can’t change with the times and the virtues that made them good leaders in the past make them terrible leaders in the present.

The Russia/China Issue. Iran could have had a full military alliance with Russia. If they did, they’d be in a lot stronger position. Iran really wants to be an independent major regional power. The other option is to be the junior partner in a tripartate bloc with China and Russia. I understand why they want to avoid that, but being #3 in the world’s strongest alliance (and yes, that’s what it would be) comes with an absolute ton of benefits. They need to reconsider this issue. They will get some support from Russia and China, indeed, a lot of support, but neither country is going to go all out for them. If either would, Iran would be in a lot less danger.



We are witnessing a joint Israeli-US attack on Iran. Claims by the Trump administration that it is not involved are false.

Israel’s far right government and the Trump administration are joined at the hip. Particularly so in air power. .............


Offensive realism, as advanced by theorists like John Mearsheimer, posits that great powers seek to maximize their security through dominance.


Twenty years ago, the US warned prematurely of the 'birth pangs' of a new Middle East. Now they have arrived in full force – and they will not end in Iran



President Trump is reportedly returning to Washington early from a G7 summit in Canada and has told his national security council to prepare for an urgent meeting in the situation room, apparently to discuss Iran.

The US president has taken to social media to terrorize Iranian civilians, telling Tehran’s millions of inhabitants that they must immediately evacuate the city and saying “Iran should have signed the ‘deal’ I told them to sign.”

Weirdly, the strongest indication that Trump has made a decision to attack Iran might be a recent post on Truth Social about former Fox News darling Tucker Carlson.

“Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that,” IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!” the president posted.

Carlson has been an outspoken critic of warmongering toward Iran, and was reportedly responsible for personally talking the president out of his Iran brinkmanship in the first Trump administration.

Antiwar’s Scott Horton is reporting that, according to his sources, the Trump administration has already decided to join in Israel’s war.

Capitol Hill is clearly worried that a war with Iran is imminent, with numerous lawmakers in the House and the Senate scrambling to get legislation in place that would stop the president from ordering such a war.

Benjamin Netanyahu has been speaking to the western press to argue in favor of assassinating Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. I keep thinking about the Mad King in Game of Thrones who went nuts and kept ordering everyone to be burned, until a member of his own court decided enough is enough and slit his throat.

A full-scale US war against Iran is one of the worst things that could possibly happen. Full stop. It would likely entail millions of deaths, massive worldwide economic suffering, chaos and devastation throughout the middle east unlike anything we’ve ever seen, and could easily wind up with an Israeli nuclear weapon exploding in Tehran. There is a reason even a lot of otherwise war-happy swamp monsters in Washington have resisted going down this path. I really, really hope it doesn’t happen.

If this is the direction the empire chooses to go, expect mass-scale psychological manipulation on an entirely unprecedented level to dupe the public into going along with this thing. Expect far more lies. Expect far more propaganda. Expect psyops. Maybe a false flag attack or two. It will be bad.

Don’t buy into the lies. Oppose their warmongering at the top of your lungs, with everything you’ve got. I will be doing the same.

Anyone who supports this war is an enemy of the human species.



......................... Absent the US getting involved, I put the odds in Iran’s favor, but it’s not a strong bet. It’s simply too hard to tell the actual situation. Some claim Israel has complete air dominance over Iran, others say that’s not true, and I don’t know. Likewise, lots of claims are made about how many launchers have been destroyed, but there’s no reason to believe either side on this. Attack volumes from Iran are way down, but is that because of strategy or capability? If it’s capability, they’re sunk. If its strategy, maybe not. It’s quite conceivable they’re holding back a lot as they degrade AD and force the Israelis to run thru their AD missiles.

Do bear in mind that Iran has the simplest advantage: it’s much larger than Israel and has a much larger population and it is an industrial state which has the ability to build its own weapons. China is not going to intervene militarily, but I’m sure they’ll sell Iran as much cheap materials it needs to build more missiles and drones, and China has the cheapest and most extensive supply network for both.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that if Israel decides it is losing, it does have nukes and if any country in the world other than US is psychotic enough to use nuclear weapons, it’s Israel.


Iran and the Permanent War Machine: The Modern State as Organized Crime
Lies and treachery have now become the explicit doctrine of the U.S. government

................. Throughout Trump’s presidential campaign, both the candidate and his big-name supporters earnestly promised the electorate that Trump was the guy who would not start new (‘stupid’) wars, unlike his Democrat opponents. During his inaugural speech, Trump repeated that promise.

Less than six months later, Trump has started a stupid war – what is more, he has started the very war that the neocons themselves have been clamoring for these past three decades ...............


Tulsi Gabbard Is A Warmongering Asshole

................... This fraudster has built an entire political career out of pretending to oppose war and militarism in order to win the support of Americans who are sick of pouring blood and treasure into the US slaughter machine, opportunistically drifting to whatever corner of the political spectrum would offer her the most power, and then when she got as high as she can go she sold all her stated principles to the furthest extent possible at the earliest opportunity.

Pee fetish porn stars have more dignity and integrity.

I feel so stupid for having bought into Gabbard’s antiwar schtick early on. Fuck this asshole, fuck Trump, fuck Israel, and fuck the US empire.



Sci Fare:





Other Fare:

Muslims grew fastest; Christians lagged behind global population increase



Pics of the Week:

Utah Drone Guy

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Monday, June 16, 2025

2025-06-15

 **** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)


Economic and Market Fare:


Barclays: 2025 CES benchmark revision: A requiem for the mighty tailwind (via TheBondBeat)

Preliminary QCEW estimates suggest that the CES overstated job gains by 857k from April​-​December 2024, and we expect an eventual revision of 0.8​-​1.1mn. This would trim monthly job gains by 65​-​85k​/​m over this period, reflecting the diminished tailwind on labor supply from slowed immigration.

Be prepared for a big benchmark revision to the job estimates in the upcoming employment situation report for January 2026. This could be preceded by a preliminary benchmark adjustment this August that is even larger.



Bubble Fare:


.................. The core of our discipline is to align our investment stance with prevailing, measurable, observable market conditions, and to change our investment stance as those conditions change. No forecasts are required.

As I noted in April, we can accept the prospect of a collapse to run-of-the-mill valuations just as easily as the prospect of record valuations and endless monetary interventions. History has a great deal to say about the likelihood of one versus the other, and arithmetic has a great deal to say about the very different long-term returns that investors could expect in those different situations. Still, we’ll take good care of the future by taking good care of the present moment, again, and again. That’s where we focus our attention. ................


It’s tempting to imagine that somehow valuations have become irrelevant or less useful than in the past, because average valuations have been higher in recent decades than they were historically. What this conclusion misses is that the mapping from valuations to subsequent returns remains intact. Extreme valuations have still been followed, on average by poor returns. Depressed valuations have still been followed, on average, by outstanding returns.

Notice that even in data since the 1980’s, there is a clear diagonal mapping from valuations to subsequent market returns. Presently, the S&P 500 price/forward earnings ratio is consistent with likely 10-year S&P 500 total returns of about zero, with low single digit returns being the optimistic case.
What the higher level of valuations of recent decades have actually done is to steepen the relationship between starting valuations and subsequent returns. Valuations at the end of a given investment horizon have tended to be higher, on average, so that any given starting valuation has mapped to a higher subsequent return. Yet extreme valuations have typically still been followed by reversion to less extreme valuations. .....



Charts:
1: '



(not just) for the ESG crowd:





So, there were protests in L.A. over Trump’s immigrant removal strategy, some turned violent and Trump is calling in the National Guard and talking about using the military.

It’s worth pointing out that Trump has deported less undocumented immigrants than Biden did over comparable periods. This isn’t about deportation, as such.

What it is about is Gestapo tactics: sending people to torture prisons without due process; wearing masks and refusing to show badges or warrants; giving ICE the right to create its own warrants without judicial oversight (clearly unconstitutional); seizing people who are showing up for meetings at immigration facilities or immigrant courts.

It’s not what Trump is doing, it’s how he’s doing it—in the cruelest, most lawless and unconstitutional way possible.

The message is “we can do whatever we want, and you can’t stop us.”

Thus, protests. And, thus, Trump escalating immediately to the national guard: military force (that’s what the Guard is: military.)

Protestors are caught in the paradox of protest in a fascist state: if you don’t protest the powers that be assume they’ve gotten away with it and will escalate. If you do protest, they use that as an excuse to escalate. ............

................ So, will Americans kneel, then fall to their bellies? Will the legal system and the constitution work? Or will this escalate until the US is a failed state?



Geopolitical Fare:


Well it looks like the US is on the precipice of war with Iran again.

US officials are telling the press that they anticipate a potential impending Israeli attack on Iran while the family members of US military personnel are being assisted with evacuation from bases in the region.

This comes as Tehran issues a warning that it will strike all US military bases within range of its missiles if it comes under attack. ..........





With Trump's blessing, Israel launches a devastating attack on Iran.




The crew are now hostages...

When Israel intercepted the Madleen in international waters, it had no jurisdiction to act, and aside from anything else, the crew had committed no crime. The Madleen was perfectly entitled to sail through international waters and deliver aid to Gaza. The attempt to deliver aid was not illegal, the interception was.

Israeli drones sprayed the Madleen with a white substance and an Israeli boat rammed the aid vessel before commandos boarded it, all because it contained things like baby food, medicine and prosthetics. Israel must defend itself from those things, apparently. ...............

Bizarrely, Israel's act of piracy was described by the BBC as "diverting" the Madleen. In what universe was this a diversion? When you capture people in international waters who have committed no crime, you have not diverted them, you have kidnapped them. The crew of the Madleen are hostages, and not only that, Israel is already bragging about how it plans to abuse them.

The crew of 12, who the media describe as "activists", comprise of journalists, politicians, and a doctor. They are to be taken to the port of Ashdod where they will be psychologically tortured by the IDF. .............

The real mission of the Freedom Flotilla was not to feed Gaza because those small vessels can only carry so much. The real mission was to break the starvation blockade by showing the world we are dealing with monsters who have no regard for international law. The Madleen might not have reached the shores of Palestine, but it has spectacularly achieved its mission of exposing a rogue state. Well done.


Noam Chomsky offered a rule of thumb for predicting the ‘mainstream’ response to crimes against humanity:

‘There is a way to calibrate reaction. If it’s a crime of somebody else, particularly an enemy, then we’re utterly outraged. If it’s our own crime, either comparable or worse, either it’s suppressed or denied. ...............................................................................


...
...



Sci Fare:

An immensely readable dive into the ‘predictive processing’ hypothesis, our best guess as to how the mind really works


A fresh look at Andromeda’s motion reveals the Milky Way may escape the expected crash for at least 10 billion years







Other Fare:

Tribalism, Neo-Feudalism And The Vise Of Technology In The Age Of Hyper-Acceleration

I’ve truly underestimated the gullibility of the Canadian public – after being predictably on-track for a massive pendulum swing to a Conservative super-majority from 10 years of Liberal policies demolishing Canada, the entire dynamic reversed and was nullified within a few short weeks by the entire “Elbows Up” mind-fuck.

The irony behind all this is that the public largely switched their vote for the candidate Donald Trump wanted to win because of their own Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Watching it from the outside was demoralizing.

(Steve Bannon told me before the election that Trump’s “51st State” riffs were done on purpose to get the libs re-elected and Trump himself took a victory lap afterwards – Canadians were had. Why? Because the Americans want Alberta, and they think they’ll get it through de facto economic or political integration within a few years after #WEXIT happens).

We’ll see how long this administration lasts – nominally a minority, but functioning as a quasi-majority, and already introducing truly horrific legislation like Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act – which is more of a mass surveillance and war on cash bill than anything else. ..........



Satire:


Due to concerns that peace talks between Iran and the US were about to succeed, Israel was left with no choice but to bomb Iran in self-defence. Iran is now expected to launch a totally unprovoked counter-attack which is definitely not what Israel wanted.

Israel's "pre-emptive" terror attack murdered civilians in apartment buildings across Iran and it might have also killed one or two scientists and military leaders. The important thing is it got its real target: the civilians.

Israel has refuted the claim that its terror attack achieved nothing other than infuriating Iran, reminding us it has dragged the US and UK into another needless war in the Middle East. Israel is good at that sort of thing.

You will be reassured to hear that the American and British militaries are preparing to defend Israeli airspace. Our leaders were unable to think of an alternative approach such as letting Israel fight its own fucking war. This is because they were worried about further Epstein leaks. Aren't we all? ...........
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Sunday, June 8, 2025

2025-06-08

 **** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)


Economic and Market Fare:


...... While markets are said to abhor uncertainty, stocks these days seem to eat it up. It’s basically uncertainty on top of uncertainty. The world has never been so awash in speculative finance, ensuring aberrant market behavior. Never has the global leveraged speculating community been as colossal and powerful. Egregious Treasury “basis trade” leveraging drives unprecedented overall hedge fund leverage. Household (loving dip buying) market participation is unparalleled, with the proliferation of online accounts, options trading, and herd-like speculation creating extraordinary market-moving power.

Importantly, the current remarkable backdrop creates a uniquely potent “risk on/risk off” market dynamic. Case in point: From April 25th ‘24 lows to July 10th 24’ highs, the Bloomberg MAG7 Index surged 38%. From July 10th highs to August 5th ’24 lows, MAG7 dropped 22%. Then, from August 5th lows to December 18th highs, the index surged 51%. From December 18th highs to April 7th ’25 lows, MAG7 sank 33%. And from April 7th lows to Friday’s (June 6th) close, the index has rallied 35%. ............



It has been some time since I’ve provided detailed analysis of the Trump Tariff situation. Others are covering the details of the Tariffs themselves quite well. The best coverage of the tariff details comes (unsurprisingly) from Joey Politano. I especially recommend checking out this piece as well as last week’s piece on the car tariffs. As usual then, I want to cover the underdiscussed aspects of this drama. This starts where I left off, writing about how the tariffs were putting the financial system under intense stress. Volatility, as measured by the “VIX” index peaked April 8th, and has been declining ever since. My last commentary on this topic was in my interview with Paul Krugman published last month. In it, I focused in on the desperate desire of financial traders to “see past” Trump’s erratic and destructive behavior: .........

............ The highly motivated convention that has taken shape over the past month started solidifying with the Financial Times’ Robert Armstrong who coined TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out on May 2nd. This phrase has everything. It insults Trump, it's catchy and memorable, and it boils down a set of complex issues to its essentials. Wall Street has run with it. Hence why, despite everything that has happened, the S&P 500 is basically flat on the year. ............



Look, I’ll be honest.
It’s a bull market.
Get in and hold on.
It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.
Will people overcomplicate it? Absolutely.
But do you have to?
Not at all.
Have exposure. Manage risk. That’s the job.
And this week was another reminder as even the weakest areas of the market woke up. ........


DB: The real story (via TheBondBeat)

As we await the US employment numbers, it is worth taking a step back. While everyone is focused on the impact of tariffs, the real story for the US economy is the collapse in immigration: down more than 90% compared to the run rate of previous years, equivalent to a slowing in labour force growth of more than 2 million people. This represents a far more sustained negative supply shock for the economy than tariffs. Last year we were writing that the US was benefitting from a goldilocks mix of high employment growth and low wages precisely because of high immigration numbers. If recent immigration trends continue, it must follow that over the course of the year the reverse will happen. As the 2022 energy shock showed, a negative supply shock is not good news for a currency.


Organisation slashes forecasts and says US will be hit particularly hard

................ US growth will slow particularly sharply, sliding from 2.8 per cent last year to just 1.6 per cent in 2025 and 1.5 per cent in 2026, while a bout of higher inflation will prevent the Federal Reserve from cutting rates this year, the OECD said. 

The latest assessment represents a downgrade to its March interim forecasts, which preceded Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcements on April 2. Even then, the OECD warned of a “significant toll” stemming from the levies and associated uncertainty over policy. 

Trump has since partially climbed down on some duties, but the increase in the average US effective tariff rate is still “unprecedented”, from 2.5 per cent to above 15 per cent — the highest since the second world war, the OECD noted. ...........

.................. Fiscal risks are rising along with trade tensions, the OECD warned, with demands for more defence expenditure set to add to spending pressures.

“Historically elevated” equity valuations are increasing vulnerabilities to negative shocks in financial markets. 

A long spell of weak investment has compounded the longer-term challenges facing OECD economies, and this is further sapping the growth outlook ............


Numerous market and economic indicators are suggesting the Fed should be continuing to ease interest rates. See the pictorial below.


For the first time in almost a generation, governments are starting to face regular resistance from investors when they try to sell long-term debt


Markets fear a new wave of volatility next month when a deadline for trade negotiations ends





Charts:
1: 



(not just) for the ESG crowd:

North America, Asia and Europe will likely be pummeled by record heat and other weather extremes, including a potentially active hurricane season.



.............. Climate leadership demands not just ambition but continuity. The United States’ repeated pattern of engagement and disengagement from global climate frameworks damages its standing in ways that statements and summitry cannot easily undo. Many countries now view the United States as an unreliable partner. This loss of credibility undermines not only the United States’ diplomatic leverage but also the broader multilateral system, which depends on trust and predictability. 

............... These ‘polycentric’ sources of climate action suggest that US leadership may shift from a top-down federal model to a more networked and decentralised form. This model not only cushions the blow of federal backsliding but can provide a level of continuity that Washington currently lacks. The polycentric approach offers a path for long-term engagement through coalitions of the willing — a bottom-up force that may keep the United States relevant even as its federal government disengages.

Yet in the arena of international diplomacy — where state-to-state trust is paramount — such subnational actions cannot fully substitute for coherent national leadership ............


The self-refuting concept behind small modular nuclear reactors

.... Despite the narrative set out by nuclear advocacy groups, so called “small modular reactors” (SMRs in short) are neither small, nor modular — let alone affordable or scalable. Even as the idea of building such power plants is gaining prominence among business leaders and government officials alike, the economics of the concept almost never gets a mention beyond a few superficial statements. Recently I came across a terrific interview with physicist and author M. V. Ramana, who after demolishing a number of myths around nuclear energy, finally mentioned the bogus economics behind building and operating such reactors.



......... Results show that heatwaves can alter parasite burden up to 13-fold, whereby amplitude, duration, and timing can interact with baseline temperature. Our results reveal complex interactions between heatwave attributes and baseline temperature, emphasising that heatwaves have context-dependent effects on parasite prevalence and proliferation. Additionally, when compared to other types of temperature variation (for example, cold snaps), heatwaves behave differently. While specific effects may vary across systems, these results demonstrate that interactions between heatwave attributes and baseline temperature can drive substantial variation in infection outcomes. These findings highlight the challenges and complexities involved in understanding and predicting how climate change and extreme weather events may influence disease dynamics in the context of global change .............



Trump 2.0.:


More than 50 high-level Trump administration officials have links to groups behind the Heritage Foundation-backed plan, a DeSmog analysis found.



One of the recurring symptoms of collapsing political systems, and indeed of whole crumbling civilizations, is the emergence of unusually incompetent leaders. Throughout history, these leaders have aspired to leadership of doomed societies because (a) they’re too stupid to realize the society is inevitably collapsing, (b) they are arrogant enough to believe they have the ‘solution’ to collapse, and/or (c) they are mentally ill and are seeking to exercise power as a means of exercising more control over their own lives and those they blame for their distress.

This was clearly true of the moronic Augustus Caesar, and it seems equally true of the equally dim-witted Donald Trump. The latter, the greatest business failure in civilization’s history and a man so traumatized by family abuse that he cannot put together a complete, coherent English sentence, is now replaying Augustus as the Klepto King.

Kleptocracy is one of three ways that those in power have historically dealt with the final stages of a societal collapse, the other two being autocracy and ideological extremism. Autocrats dismiss democratic principles and ideas and insist that they know better than anyone else how to deal with any crises. Ideological extremists likewise eschew ideas of democracy in exhorting the populace to have faith in some ideology that will provide a magical solution to the crises: the Rapture, or some technotopia, or some spontaneous global transformation of human consciousness, etc.

Kleptocrats, on the other hand, know full well that the jig is up. Their goal is to extract as much of the society’s declining wealth for themselves as possible as quickly as possible, before the whole thing falls apart, while hoodwinking the population into believing they’re doing things to help the people avenge those they blame for the collapse (those blamed being usually immigrants, supporters of ‘other’ ideologies, and ‘forces of evil’), rather than for their own personal enrichment.

Augustus Caesar was an autocrat. The death cult and religious cult leaders were mostly ideological extremists. Trump is a textbook kleptocrat. He’s so clueless that he’s even overtly branded his kleptocratic raiders (‘DOGE’, led by Musk, a world-class kleptocrat in his own right).

The Project 2025 playbook is essentially a textbook for dismantling the ship of state to allow the kleptocrats to extract the maximum amount of the state’s remaining wealth as possible for their private interests.

How did this come to pass this time around? A populace that has given up on its existing governing entities, because they have simply and obviously ceased to serve the best interests of the people, is prone, in anger or desperation, to turn to unusually incompetent leaders, either as a simple protest and act of rebellion against their dysfunctional government, or in the belief that anything must be better than the status quo, so they’ll give anyone who proffers a different solution to the crisis a try. ...............




Geopolitical Fare:

Ukraine strikes Russia's nuclear triad


Trump and the Sources of U.S. Power



............ Joe Biden is a moron, as was his admin--a collection of war criminals and ignoramuses. In its present state the US, as represented by its "elites" is an existential enemy of Russia and Russian people. Trump admin is no different, just with its own twist and flavor.  ..............



It’s about living in reality: ..................

............................................ In every single case the discourse had and has been seized by what people want to believe, or what oligarchs want people to believe: what pays, not what is true. There are no consequences for being wrong, and no self awareness.

.................. Now it isn’t entirely true that there’s no accountability in the West. There is. There is only one rule that the West insists always be followed:

The rich must keep becoming richer, no matter the cost to anyone or anything else.

Because that is the only form of Western accountability, the West will keep losing, because richer rich and higher inequality do not cause or even correlate with any of the main constituents of power, prosperity or technological progress

Our entire discourse system, our entire media, and our entire elites have zero accountability except for making the rich, richer.

At this they have succeeded, and at nothing else.



........ Israel killed four journalists in an airstrike on a hospital the other day, and it caused barely a blip in the news cycle. It’s so crazy how this is just normal now.

... The behavior of the state of Israel is one nonstop argument against the continued existence of the state of Israel.

❖

Most Israel apologia is just saying ridiculous nonsense in an assertive tone and demanding to be taken seriously. They’re butchering children by the thousands in a completely undisguised effort to purge all Palestinians from a Palestinian territory, and then spouting a bunch of transparently bogus talking points to try and spin this as fine and normal. But because mainstream institutions solemnly promote this obvious bullshit, we’re expected to treat it like it’s a completely valid position that needs to be respected.

There’s no actual basis for the pro-genocide position in truth, logic, or morality. It’s a completely indefensible position, so self-evidently wrong that a child could recognize it at a glance. But because support for Israel is so entrenched within our political-media class, and because Israel’s supporters have a solid understanding of the power of narrative control, they are able to promote this nakedly evil agenda by sheer force of will — just by saying their talking points in confident-sounding voices. .........


How 75 years of settler-colonial logic reached its inevitable conclusion, and Netanyahu is not to blame

The convenient fiction that Benjamin Netanyahu is solely responsible for the Genocide in Gaza is crumbling, and what lies beneath is far more terrifying than any single man's malice. It is the revelation of an entire society that has, for decades, nurtured and normalized the dehumanization of Palestinians to such an extent that genocide has become not just permissible, but popular.

When 82% of Israelis support the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, we are not witnessing the machinations of one extremist leader. When 47% endorse the biblical slaughter of Jericho—where "all inhabitants" were killed—as a model for military action, we are staring into the abyss of collective moral collapse. When 56% want Palestinian citizens of Israel expelled from their own homeland, we are confronting the genocidal DNA of a settler-colonial project that has finally shed its liberal veneer. 

The numbers, revealed in a Penn State University poll, are not anomalies. They are the logical culmination of 75 years of systematic dehumanization that began not with Netanyahu's rise to power, but with the founding of the state itself. This is not "Netanyahu's war"—it is Israel's genocide, and it has been decades in the making. ............





A.I. Fare:


This week, readers were given fresh insights from UBS (read: here & here), highlighting the explosive surge in data center investments. As we've noted before, one asset manager—backing a multi-billion-dollar AI data center project in Texas—described to us the current AI infrastructure buildout as a multi-year "sprint."

With hundreds of billions pouring into data center development—concentrated in Texas and the Heartland due to cheap land and reliable power—investors should be asking one critical question: how fast is AI adoption scaling across corporate America?

According to Goldman Sachs' latest AI Adoption Tracker for Q2 2025, the enterprise implementation of AI continues to expand, particularly across sectors most vulnerable to automation. At the same time, productivity gains are becoming more measurable, even as AI-related layoffs have yet to materialize. .........


Coming to a campus near you.

AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have been shown repeatedly to provide false information, hallucinate completely made-up sources and facts, and lead people astray with their confidently wrong answers to questions. For that reason, AI tools are viewed with skepticism by many educators. So, of course, OpenAI and its competitors are targeting colleges and pushing its services on students—concerns be damned. ...........


LLM “reasoning” is so cooked they turned my name into a verb

... Apple has a new paper; it’s pretty devastating to LLMs, a powerful followup to one from many of the same authors last year. 

........ On the other hand it also echoes and amplifies a bunch of arguments that Arizona State University computer scientist Subbarao (Rao) Kambhampati has been making for a few years about so-called “chain of thought” and “reasoning models” and their “reasoning traces” being less than they are cracked up to be.


The AI arms race is moving too fast for safety, with companies pushing boundaries and governments lagging. AI-driven dehumanization and the unchecked proliferation of autonomous weapons require responsible leadership before it’s too late.



Sci Fare:


.......... In a new paper, published in Physical Review D, my colleagues and I propose a striking alternative. Our calculations suggest the Big Bang was not the start of everything, but rather the outcome of a gravitational crunch or collapse that formed a very massive black hole – followed by a bounce inside it.

This idea, which we call the black hole universe, offers a radically different view of cosmic origins, yet it is grounded entirely in known physics and observations.

Today's standard cosmological model, based on the Big Bang and cosmic inflation (the idea that the early Universe rapidly blew up in size), has been remarkably successful in explaining the structure and evolution of the Universe. But it comes at a price: it leaves some of the most fundamental questions unanswered.

For one, the Big Bang model begins with a singularity – a point of infinite density where the laws of physics break down. This is not just a technical glitch; it's a deep theoretical problem that suggests we don't really understand the beginning at all.

To explain the Universe's large-scale structure, physicists introduced a brief phase of rapid expansion into the early Universe called cosmic inflation, powered by an unknown field with strange properties. Later, to explain the accelerating expansion observed today, they added another "mysterious" component: dark energy.

In short, the standard model of cosmology works well – but only by introducing new ingredients we have never observed directly. Meanwhile, the most basic questions remain open: where did everything come from? Why did it begin this way? And why is the Universe so flat, smooth, and large?

Our new model tackles these questions from a different angle – by looking inward instead of outward. ...............


An international team of astronomers has detected a bizarre cosmic object that pulses with both radio waves and X-rays—something never seen before. Known as ASKAP J1832-0911, this “long-period transient” flashes every 44 minutes and could unveil entirely new physics or models of stellar life cycles.


Neuroscientists have long ignored the variability in animals’ behavioral responses in favor of studying differences across groups. But work on the brain differences that underlie that variability is beginning to pay off.



Other Fare:

Are medicine’s middlemen pharmacy parasites?

........... Schmidtknecht is far from alone in choosing to forgo a prohibitively expensive prescription. In recent polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 30 percent of Americans reported that they had not taken their medications as prescribed in the previous year due to cost. Other studies have estimated that more than 1.1 million Medicare patients will die over the next decade for the same reason.



They're buying the world, and ordinary people are paying the price—with their money, their health, their lives. At "SuperReturn International," the global clique of financial investors gathers for five days to observe the navel-gazing of predatory capitalists. The focus at the posh Berlin hotel is to discuss the situation and plot how a devastating business model can produce even more suffering, and thus even more profit. An alliance of four organizations is protesting—and a rock star is collaborating ............


The culture war’s favourite prophet can’t finish a straight thought

........... But these days, the reactionary right is miserably bereft of real intellectuals, and a decade or so ago, Peterson stepped into this void and was rewarded with global success.

That success, improbably, comes from a unique fusion of obscurantism and conservative pomposity.  ..............

The incredible thing about Peterson is that, in writing and speech, he somehow manages to be both a sententious reactionary and a purveyor of postmodern gobbledygook. He is a master of faux-Confucian aphorisms—“There is no being without imperfection”—and spouts kindergarten morality with the self-serious gravitas of a bearded prophet who has just been handed stone tablets by the Almighty. But he’s long been equally prone to deconstructive cul-de-sacs and conceptual negations that save him from ever having to explain what he actually thinks or means. ...............


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Sunday, June 1, 2025

2025-06-01

 **** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)


Economic and Market Fare:


‘Soft’ consumer and business confidence data deteriorated rapidly due to US government policy. ‘Hard’ data has held up better, partly due to frontloading effects from the tariffs. But now the negative impact is starting to show in the hard data as well. ...........

..................... Overall, we continue to expect the hard data to show more substantial negative effects over the course of the next half year. Recent data has been strengthened by frontloading effects. Upcoming months will show the payback on top off the overall deterioration. For GDP growth, a reversal of the strong imports of Q1 will mean a boost in Q2, while investment will decline. Consumption will slow, as consumers too have frontloaded purchases, and further suppressed by sentiment, increasing credit constraints, and equity volatility dampening consumption of high-income households. The de-escalation of the trade war is a positive, but current tariffs will still do substantial damage to the economy.


China’s transition from lead bilateral banker to chief debt collector of the developing world

Soaring debt repayments and a sharp reduction in lending have transformed China’s role in developing country finances from capital provider to debt collector. Mounting pressures from Chinese debts are especially severe for many of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries. A retrenchment in Western aid and trade is compounding these challenges while undermining any geopolitical advantage for the West.

Key findings
  • In 2025, the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries will make record high debt repayments totalling $22 billion to China. Beijing has transitioned from capital provider to net financial drain on developing country budgets as debt servicing costs on Belt and Road Initiative projects from the 2010s now far outstrip new loan disbursements.
  • China continues to finance strategic and resource-critical partners despite a broader collapse in its global lending. The largest recipients of new lending include immediate neighbours, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia, and developing countries that are critical mineral or battery metal exporters, such as Argentina, Brazil, Congo DR, and Indonesia.
  • China is grappling with a dilemma of its own making: it faces growing diplomatic pressure to restructure unsustainable debt, and mounting domestic pressure to recover outstanding debts, particularly from its quasi-commercial institutions. But a retrenchment in Western aid and trade is compounding difficulties for developing countries while squandering any geopolitical advantage for the West.
..........


Elon Musk says the republican bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but it can't be both. As fate would have it, it's neither.

................. You can argue that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but gratuitously stripping 13.7 million people of health insurance and taking food assistance away from millions of parents struggling to feed their children is pretty ugly stuff. And doing it to “pay for” tax cuts that will overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest is both shameful and immoral.

As the economist and former State Senator Reynold Nesiba put it, this isn’t a beautiful bill. It’s an egregious transfer of wealth from the least among us to those who already enjoy substantial economic security .................


Investors are fretting about a clause that would penalise foreign holders of US assets

Thirty years ago, when I was a rookie reporter, a veteran writer offered me sage advice: whenever presented with a government or corporate document that is more than 100 pages long, hunt for hidden bombs.

Donald Trump’s thousand-page (plus) “big, beautiful bill” is a case in point. Since the House of Representatives passed it last week, this fiscal act has been (rightly) lambasted for many reasons: it favours the rich over the poor; cruelly cuts social safety nets; and recklessly expands the debt. Even Elon Musk is upset.

But what investors should also fret about, if they care about the state of Treasuries or are a non-American entity holding US assets, is a clause buried in the bowels of this behemoth called section 899. This would enable the US Treasury to impose penalties on “applicable persons” from “discriminatory foreign countries” by increasing US federal income tax and withholding rates by up to 20 percentage points on their US investments, on a variable scale. It might thus be viewed as a novel “revenge tax” (as some lawyers call it) that Trump could use to bully friends and foes alike in trade negotiations.

So, at best, all this undermines prior efforts to build a collaborative global tax system via groups such as the OECD, with its undertaxed profits rules. At worst, it makes Trump look like a feudal European king intent on using tax as a capricious tool to extract foreign tribute. Either way, it undermines the idea that America is a place of consistent investment laws — and has shocked lawyers in countries such as Canada.

“Section 899 is toxic [and] a potential game-changer for foreign investment,” Larson Gross, a tax advisory group, told clients this week. Or as Neil Bass, a Canadian lawyer wrote in his own missive: “The US just declared a tax war and it’s targeting allies.” ............




Vid Fare:


Inspired by Byron Wien, we listed VP's 10 surprises as part of our 2025 Themes. We followed his definition of a “surprise” as an event that the average investor would assign less than a 33% probability, but which we believed were “Probable,” having a 50%+ likelihood.

The below AI summary provides the key takeaways that can be read in less than 5 minutes.

AI Summary - Evaluating VP's 10 surprises for 2025

#1 – Trump's tariff and migrant policies are not as inflationary as feared [00:01:05]

Contrary to early concerns, tariffs and immigration restrictions have not forced the Fed into hiking. Inflation has risen, but not in a way that demands aggressive tightening. Instead, sticky inflation limits the Fed's ability to cut. Labor market impacts from immigration limits and deportations are still playing out, especially in construction and agriculture.

#2 – US growth neither collapses nor surges, supported by consumption [00:04:10]

Growth has been stable, but risks are rising. The fiscal impulse has plateaued, and manufacturing capex has weakened. Services have held up, but forward-looking indicators show rising downside risks to activity. Consumption remains resilient, though softening—so far, no cliff.

#3 – Powell does nothing after Jan 2025; no cuts, no hikes [00:11:58]

Initially seen as a hold scenario, Powell now has scope to cut if growth slows. The market is pricing in about three cuts, but this probably reflects a weighted probability of 1-2 cuts (without recession) or more than 4 cuts (with recession). Rate hikes are almost unthinkable due to political and fiscal constraints; even in a sharp rebound scenario, yield curve control would likely emerge instead.

#4 – U.S. 10y yields never break 5% thanks to “Bessent put” and foreign buyers [00:16:46]

Despite market volatility and bear steepening, 10-year Treasury yields have held below the key 5% level. The administration appears committed to ensuring yields don't breach this level. Policy intervention - either direct or via tools like SLR reform - is expected to keep long-end rates contained. This is a high-conviction view for us, given the importance of the bond market.

#5 – US small caps continue to underperform [00:21:34]

Despite optimism post-election, small caps have lagged due to poor index quality, interest rate sensitivity, and weak fundamentals. The index remains vulnerable to high funding costs and lacks appeal outside of single stocks related to reshoring or possibly regional banks. Tactical rallies may occur, but the broader underperformance trend remains intact.

#6 – Trump and Xi make a deal [00:25:30]

While rhetoric escalated sharply, both sides have signaled openness to talks. A shallow, symbolic deal is likely—low-quality but headline-friendly. Structural tensions remain, but neither side wants to escalate beyond manageable limits. Economic pain on both sides will push toward de-escalation later in the year. We believe peak escalation has passed, and the two parties will gradually move toward some form of a agreement.

#7 – Euro breaks parity as Germany “brakes” its economy [00:34:32]

This was a clear miss for us. German politics unexpectedly unified in response to Trump's early policies and managed to pass a massive fiscal expansion (~€1 trillion), loosening the debt brake. Liberation Day also unleashed a repatriation wave that weakened the dollar and boosted the euro. While economic fundamentals remain shaky, capital flows have overridden them. The euro might give back some of its gain on a tactical basis, but flows are a structural tailwind from here.

#8 – OPEC Loses More Members as Oil Falls [00:43:49]

The oil price has fallen since the start of the year, with Kazakhstan exceeding quotas and OPEC adjusting “voluntary” cuts. While no formal exits have occurred, cohesion in the cartel is weakening. The oil story is both supply- and demand-driven, with supply rising and growth headwinds reinforcing downside for demand. We still prefer energy equities over crude itself. So far, the surprise remains valid, with more to play out.

#9 – Gold fails to make new highs, underperforms 60-40 [00:41:43]

Liberation Day triggered a shift in global reserve preferences, with gold benefiting from reduced trust in Treasuries. Emerging market central banks, esp. those wary of sanctions, may now see gold as their primary neutral reserve asset. Gold is now seen as a structural allocation, and we think tactical sell-offs are opportunities to add exposure.

#10 – Capital Cycle: buy China tech, luxury goods as contrarian play [00:46:26]

The call began well with a rally in Q1, but Liberation Day and the intensification of trade tensions prompted a reassessment. Chinese equities now face structural headwinds, especially for international investors. Luxury goods remain appealing long-term due to their IP and Lindy effect characteristics, but timing is poor amid global growth concerns and geopolitical risk. Both themes remain valid from a capital cycle view, but we are shifting our attention towards LatAm and US single stocks that may benefit from reshoring and other key themes that have emerged since Liberation Day.



Bubble Fare:

The dumbest PE performance metric still bamboozles some investors


Private Equity is ramping up efforts to get at the $12 trillion 401k sector.



Charts:
1: 
2: 




(not just) for the ESG crowd:



Exclusive: André Corrêa do Lago says ‘answers have to come from the economy’ as climate policies trigger populist-fuelled backlash

.................... “It is not possible to have [scientific] denialism at this stage, after everything that has happened in recent years. So there is a migration from scientific denial to a denial that economic measures against climate change can be good for the economy and for people.”



The failure of the climate movement isn’t just political or scientific—it’s philosophical. At its core is a reductionist mindset: isolate one culprit, pursue one goal, rally around one fix. Fossil fuels became the villain, CO₂ emissions the metric, and renewables the savior—embraced more for narrative simplicity than system reality. Missing was any serious reckoning with energy, complexity, ecological limits, or human behavior. If fossil fuels caused the problem, then renewables must solve it. Doubt didn’t fit the script. ...........

.............. That’s the deeper failure. Not that the warnings weren’t loud enough. Not that the science wasn’t clear. But the framing itself was naïve and simplistic. We tried to solve climate in a way that let us avoid the real questions—about limits, about how we live, about what kind of future we’re actually powering toward.

This wasn’t just a climate mistake. It’s the same pattern we’ve seen with GDP as a proxy for wellbeing, with technological fixes for social breakdown, with laws against addiction instead of understanding its roots. We break the world into parts, fix the ones we can see, and call the system stable—until it breaks again. ................


Tverberg: Economic contraction, coming right up

I predict that the world economy will shrink in the next 10 years. I think that this is bound to happen because of energy and debt limits the world economy is hitting. There are a variety of other factors involved, as well.

In this post, I will try to describe the physics-based limits that the economy is facing, related to diminishing returns of many kinds. The problem we are facing has sometimes been called “limits to growth,” or “overshoot and collapse.” Such changes tend to lead to a loss of “complexity.” They are part of the way economies evolve. I would also like to share some ideas on the changes that are likely to occur over the coming decade.

[1] The world economy is a tightly integrated physics-based system, which is experiencing diminishing returns in far more areas than just oil supply.
 ............
...........



Trump 2.0:


.................................................... In his 2024 campaign announcement speech, Trump vowed that if given a second term he would “dismantle the deep state.” Now, predictably, he is touting Trillion Dollar military budgets and a new boondoggle “missile defense” program that makes every “Deep State” operative tremble with glee. He marketed himself as the “candidate of peace,” which is usually what Americans want to hear — and then undermined his own “ceasefire” arrangement to fuel the annihilation rampage of an Israeli government controlled by messianic fanatics. He strode into office signing an executive order to “Restore Free Speech,” and proceeded to spearhead a relentless campaign to punish disfavored political speech. He railed against influence-peddling and corruption — and now you can buy a Trump “memecoin” for presidential access. The list goes on.

It’s true that when Trump first won in 2016, he did so by overthrowing the two reigning American political dynasties, Bush and Clinton, and also overturning much conventional wisdom that had for too long prevailed. This did present a historically unique opportunity to inaugurate what you might call a “new prosperity,” unshackled from outmoded conventions. The reality, let’s say, has been slightly more complicated.



Geopolitical Fare:

"What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination: indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal killing of civilians," said former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

............... "The school was supposed to be a place of safety. Instead, it was turned into an inferno,"


The Trump administration announced a truce with the Houthi rebels on May 6, but this was after the United States had already bombed critical infrastructure for importing food and fuel.





Vid Fare:


The ongoing Israeli military assault on Gaza is, in my view, one of the worst crimes in human history. For the last year and a half, Israel has carried out a mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and now starvation campaign against a besieged, defenseless population of two million Palestinians.



Sci Fare:



One computer scientist’s “stunning” proof is the first progress in 50 years on one of the most famous questions in computer science.



Other Fare:


America's government and technology giants are fusing into a codependent superstructure in a race to dominate AI and space for the next generation.

Why it matters: The merging of Washington and Silicon Valley is driven by necessity — and fierce urgency.

The U.S. government needs AI expertise and dominance to beat China to the next big technological and geopolitical shift — but can't pull this off without the help of Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, Nvidia and many others.

These companies can't scale AI, and reap trillions in value, without government helping ease the way with more energy, more data, more chips and more precious minerals. These are the essential ingredients of superhuman intelligence.

The big picture: Under President Trump, both are getting what they want ..............



I think it’s clear that democracy and capitalism don’t work together. Capitalists always wind up buying the government, and the only solution is a Great Depression sized catastrophe to reset the wealth of capitalists. But then, over time, they will capture the government again.

This isn’t to say much good may not be done at various times. Usually after things get bad enough, a generation winds up in power who is determined to make government work “for the people” because they’ve seen what happens when it doesn’t. War, revolution, poverty, depression and so on. ................


How the consumer welfare and tort reform movements eroded the right to a civil jury trial, and how to fix it.



I am not a politically complicated person. I think genocide is bad. I think peace is good. I don’t think anyone should be struggling to survive in a civilization that is capable of providing for all. I think we should try to preserve the biosphere we all depend on for survival.

To me these are just obvious, common sense positions, no more remarkable or profound than ........



Gabriel Zucman is a French-born economist who teaches at California, Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics. Zucman’s academic specialization is in wealth inequality, using tax data to track the stratification in wealth in the US and the rest of the world. A student of famed inequality expert, Thomas Piketty, he is an important figure in the World Inequality Database.

His most recent findings expose a gross obscenity, a level of wealth inequality in the US that should shame every politician, every mainstream-media commentator, and every cultural influencer who fails to make recognition of this travesty central to his or her message. ..........



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May’s best science images
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