The bond vigilantes are back.
"The only regulation that works is failure."
Watch this podcast with Mike Benz
It's a terrifying overview of the U.S. government's Orwellian efforts to massively censor everything on the internet that doesn't fit official narratives. If you do nothing else, watch the podcast and be aware, and help fight this.
“It started in 2014 with the Ukraine fiasco, the coup and then the counter coup.”
To avoid looking like China or Russia, they needed the private sector. Plenty of Stasi-wannabe volunteers.
It doesn’t matter if you like Joe Rogan or not - Benz does 95% of the talking. There is a transcript of sorts here.
I was going to post a bunch of quotes1, but just watch, and be amazed.
“...while much of the censorship looks like it's coming domestically, it's actually by our foreign-facing department of dirty tricks Color Revolution Blob, who are professional government topplers who were then basically descended onto the 2020 election.”
This is fine:
“I think I’m unabashedly isolationist. I think the Department of Defense should be focused on defending. That position is not necessarily a majority view, but in my worldview, we should have a declaration of War with Congress if we're going to send combat troops on serious missions, and we haven't done that since” 1942*.
(*On June 4, 1942 the United States Congress passed joint resolutions declaring war on Bulgaria along with Hungary and Romania.)
“We have built an extraordinary mix of speculation, with some of the worst features of every market mania of the last hundred years currently blending parts of 1929, 1971, 1989 in Tokyo, 1999 and 2008 here in the U.S., and a bit of tulip mania occurring in the crypto world.”
- Bill Fleckenstein
Saved for future historians (Private Credit):
“Musk and Ramaswamy - they're going to run into a buzzsaw like they've never seen before. Musk - he's got a lot of swagger, so does Ramaswamy - billionaires running around, they can ax a lot of people in their private companies with no problem whatsoever, the shareholders love it, their shares go soaring up. This is not the way the public sector works, so I wish them all the luck in the world, as I did Peter Grace.”
While the 3-month/10-year U.S. Treasury yield is still inverted, the 2-year/10-year is back above zero, which in the past seems to have been a harbinger of an upcoming recession:
“I think anybody who has eyes can see the current state of the outgoing President…it’s uncertain who’s actually controlling the White House, who’s pulling the strings behind the scenes is an open question…and we are crossing red lines that for decades neither the U.S. nor Russia would have ever dared to do…”
“Goldilocks” Larry Kudlow, December 2007
The fall of Syria to Al Qaeda - with U.S. backing - is eerily reminiscent of the fall of Saddam (and the subsequent birth of ISIS), or the fall of Gaddafi (and subsequent open-air slave markets), or the return of the Taliban (actually, they never left) to Afghanistan in August 2021.
I think American neo-con warmongers have done more damage to the world in my lifetime than the Russians could ever do (short of nuking us). Mission accomplished.
In The Global War on Terror™, terror seems to have won.
Below the fold is a lot of great content (I am biased). I add stories until I feel I’m about to overwhelm you (and me) and then I post.
The speculative juices are flowing, with record stock market valuations, Bitcoin hitting 6-digits, and flows into “crypto” funds exploding. I would say from observation - and having half a brain - that 99% of “crypto” is just a grift, but I like to gamble too, and the mania is fun to watch. The Fed must be too restrictive. They cut rates again in ten days.
The China rare earth ban seems to me to be an underappreciated risk. There are some fantastic comments from Andrew Rozencwajg (whose name I can now spell without looking up), on natural gas, nuclear, coal, and EV’s. Mark Mills chimes in along the same lines.
A lot of apartment supply coming on line. We face the horrific threat of a slight deflation in rents, and any pointy-headed mainstream economist will tell you that deflation is the worst possible thing that could ever happen (other than Trump getting elected.) CRE veteran Louis Belmonte has some savvy comments.
Chris Whalen and Russell Napier are back too, and there’s more! I came across several Weimar-era quotes, of course, and there’s the usual eclectic snippets that caught my eye.
I hope everyone has a great week. Go make lots of money. That’s all the matters apparently. Godspeed.
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