The Shadow of What Was
“this absence of consequence is what troubles me the most”
“Every Treasury Secretary worries a little bit about who's going to show up at the five, seven, and 10-year auctions.”
The Fed Decision™
"The Fed is in the business of price-fixing.
It fixes interest rates and then tries to predict the future."
Jim Grant
Trade Deficit Widens to Record High in March
I’m told it was pre-tariff “front-loading”.
“The central point made by Mohit Mittal — Pimco’s chief investment officer for core strategies — is that this is a great time to buy bonds.”
Speaking of Pimco…
“The Fast-Approaching Digital Control Grid: A Checklist of Trump Administration Actions to Date”
“A digital control grid is an electronic network of digital telecommunication and information systems that allows individuals to be surveilled, tracked, and made subject to invasive controls applied to their financial transactions and resource use (such as electricity, food, water, transportation)—compromising, if not ending, all human rights and liberties. Control grids operate with significant data collection and A.I. to apply social credit systems that can be dictated on a highly centralized basis. A digital control grid ends financial freedom, replacing markets with technocracy—a system run by rules created and maintained centrally by “experts.””
“Musk is a true technocrat and represents the forefront of a new technocratic form of government that we are hurtling toward at light speed. However, the notion of technocratic governance is simply not on the radar screen of the MSM, various political think tanks, and Congress.”
I quoted this back in December 2023 in my now un-paywalled post, “Debaser":
The Fourth Turning: "It never seems to occur to [Neil] Howe that the American regime (and the whole Western world) could be structurally failing precisely because it has been captured by run-away progressive managerial technocracy..."
N.S. Lyons
And this, which I mentioned in July 2022’s, “War is a Racket”:
“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Disclaimer:
Remember, when I quote someone, I am endorsing every single thing they have ever said, written or done.
“A lot of things that are currently happening in the digital asset/stablecoin space are are creating a lot of questions about the integrity of the space, because it starts at the top. There are an incredible number of conflicts when the leader of the free world and his family are creating companies with obvious conflicts, where the only defense is um, yes, I'm involved, but my kids are managing the trust, so therefore it's okay, and in the interim I will fire all the nonfriendly regulators. I will put regulators in place or no regulators or friendly regulators that are also involved in the same projects, that can profit from the same projects, so in other words, the grift is on. It's major league. It's a big time conflict of ethics…nobody ever thought that it would be the president of United States that would make the most money in the crypto space from doing things that were conflicted.”
I agree with the above.
Dylan Ratigan’s response, though, was interesting (he’s a liberal guy):
“I think the Trump family at this point is off to a really good start in terms of monetizing the Presidency. Now I would argue Barack Obama did a really good job monetizing the Presidency. Bill Clinton kind of invented the idea of monetizing the Presidency, and I'm sure if crypto existed in the era of Obama and Clinton, they might be perfectly happy instead of selling books or selling speeches or creating nonprofits or other ways to take backdoor money - you know, the the technology has just changed to allow the President now to take extraordinary amounts of backdoor money via crypto as opposed to Pelosi's insider trading, or Hillary Clinton's speaking fees, or Barack Obama's book sales.”
From the Youtube comments hating on Ratigan, it seems like this podcast (first time I’ve seen it) must be a rah-rah blue space (which is fine). Sosnoff lost me in his response to Ratigan. He simply refused to criticize or even really acknowledge wrongdoing by any of the people mentioned besides Trump (and felt the need to defend Bernanke for some reason. Oh, Sosnoff is a billionaire. Probably a coincidence.)
As Dylan says, it’s been a long slippery slope of Presidential grifters.
I miss Ratigan on CNBS. He was bipartisan in his rants, unlike, say, Joe Kernen on the right, or Sorkin on the left. Ratigan was one of the only ones I thought who was worth a damn on financial news back in the day (Mark Haines was also good in his way).
I’m also reminded of “The Obama Factor” from 2023, which had this brutal but dead-on take by David Garrow on the Obamas:
“What do the Obamas and their circle have in common with each other? They are Ivy League people, who ran away from whatever they came from in order to become members of the credentialed elites, whose loyalty is to the system that gives them prestige—or rather, gives prestige to their degrees, of which they are the holders. Once they pair off and reproduce under the seal of Harvard or Yale, they may find it seemly to donate money to an NGO that offers microloans to female entrepreneurs in Pakistan.
So why should Obama, the ultimate winner, carry on the charade that he’s part of a community, whatever that means, with these people? He’s happy to go on NPR and talk about meaning or Marilynne Robinson novels or whatever, to make the wine moms identify with him, so he can put one over on them. Just don’t ask him to visit the hospital when you get cancer, because he’ll be hanging out on someone’s yacht, with the other winners.”
And this gem, from David Samuels, which nails the Clintons:
“Then again, they’re all like that now. Think of the Clintons. The man from Hope. And Hillary, the great defender of children and the poor. And then its like, “Wait a minute. Did they just amass $3 billion in a private foundation, plus a private fortune of $300 or $400 million within three or four years after leaving the White House?” It’s not just the Obamas. The whole system is sick.”
“A small group of traders earned a $99.6mn windfall by buying Melania Trump’s cryptocurrency token in the minutes before it was made public, an analysis by the Financial Times has found.”
“In the two and a half minutes before her post went live on Truth Social, two dozen digital wallets bought $2.6mn of the tokens from the crypto marketplace where they had been deposited.
The traders profited when Melania Trump’s post sent the price of the tokens soaring. The wallets offloaded most of their coins rapidly, with 81 per cent of their sales taking place within 12 hours…
According to its official website, the $MELANIA coin is marketed by MKT World LLC — a Delaware-registered firm the First Lady has used for various ventures since 2021. The project’s official terms do not clarify whether MKT World is the coin’s issuer, nor how profits will be split with other entities involved. Melania Trump has not responded to requests for comment.
Hayden Davis, a 28-year-old crypto entrepreneur from Texas, has said he was involved in the launch of $MELANIA. Davis, who was listed as chief executive of Kelsier, a crypto business, was also involved in the launch of the $LIBRA memecoin. This token, which was briefly endorsed in February by Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, turned into a political scandal after a price surge and crash.
The first account to buy coins in the run-up to launch bought $40,000 of $MELANIA 141 seconds prior to launch. The account went on to sell 86 per cent of its holding within two hours, making $2.5mn.
The FT has confirmed findings by Bubblemaps, a crypto analytics platform, that this wallet was funded via an account which has previously been used in ventures involving Davis.”
The rest of this post is packed with exciting weekend beach reading, including stuff from Marvin Barth, Grant Williams, the lingering effect of the GFC (i.e., Great Depression 2), Boston, CMBS, CDS, REITs, Rome, Europe, Dan Rasmussen, a FRED chart, private-equity, TWAP orders, Melody, Kris Sidial, Danny Moses, Bethany McClean, Whitney Webb, cartels, Rite Aid, Sam Zell, buybacks, Aretha Franklin, Duane Allman, King Curtis and Jim Cramer, and a few other things.
“…Then I began to do my research. I was, after all, an investigative satirist.”
America's Driving Habits: March 2025
“Clearly, When adjusted for population growth, the miles-traveled metric presents a much weaker picture. The nominal 39-month dip that began in April 1979 extends to 61 months, slightly more than five years, with a trough showing a 6.0% decline from the previous peak. The impact of the Great Recession, compounded by the COVID-19 recession, still appears dire when adjusted for population. Estimating the number of months from peak to peak is challenging, as pre-pandemic driving levels have yet to be reached—and may never be again.”
A moderately-priced $700,000 townhome.
Via Grant’s:
“A recent report from Zillow finds that starter dwellings – defined as those in the bottom third of home values within a given area – now cost $1 million or more on average in 233 domestic markets, which include boroughs within major metropolitan areas along with large suburbs and nearby towns. In early 2020, the count of such seven-figure regions stood at 85.”
The Fed did this with ZIRP and QE and INTENTIONAL high inflation, forcing anyone with money to buy RE in a desperate reach for yield, and the Fed buying up trillions of MBS - even when Case-Shiller prices were running 20% YOY!!
Powell and his apparatchiks criminally f****d-up the housing market.
Gee, why are births and household formation down?
No accountability, ever.
A $1 Billion Tax Bill Is Looming Over Boston Homeowners
“The value of some Boston office buildings has tumbled by 50%, causing homeowners to pick up the tax burden”
“…tens of thousands of Boston homeowners [have] received a bigger-than-expected tax bill, in large part because Boston office buildings have tumbled in value by more than 50% in some cases since 2019.
Boston, like other cities, could adjust by cutting budgets for public schools, police and fire or other public services. But the city doesn’t want to take these steps.”
So then I coincidentally saw this, in Melody’s latest1.
So Boston office space values are plunging, and Boston is #1 in new office space construction?
By the way, property taxes are not included the CPI: “the recent tax increase, which averaged more than 9% annualized on over one-half of single-family homeowners”
The main reason young people can’t afford homes nowadays is that they’re wasting all their money on Mother’s Day gifts!
CMBS issuance in the U.S. continued ballooning during the first quarter, as 40 private-label deals totaling $37.55 billion had priced. That compares with the $30.85 billion of issuance in last year's fourth quarter and is more than double the $17.85 billion of deal volume a year ago…At the first quarter's pace, it would be a cakewalk for the year's total issuance to top last year's $104.05 billion. But the tariff-driven uncertainty has put a question mark on that.
Trepp’s April CMBS report has revealed that overall delinquency rates spiked once again; this time rising by 38 basis points month-over-month to reach 7.03%. This marked the first time the rate surpassed the 7% threshold since January 2021. Compared to the previous year, the delinquency rate rose by 196 basis points, reflecting a growth in the delinquent balance from $39.3 billion in March to $41.9 billion in April. Looking at the trend from January through April, the overall delinquency rates were 6.56%, 6.30%, 6.65%, and 7.03%, respectively. Trepp noted that if loans beyond their maturity date but still current on interest were included, the delinquency rate would stand at 8.37%, the same level as in March 2025. In April, 91.62% of loans were current.
Among property types, multifamily and lodging experienced the largest increases in delinquency rates. Multifamily rates rose from 4.62% in January to 4.46% in February, then jumped to 5.44% in March and 6.57% in April. This is a significant increase from the April 2024 rate of 1.33%. Lodging followed a similar upward trajectory, with delinquency rates moving from 6.23% in January to 6.43% in February, 7.19% in March, and 7.85% in April, compared to 5.97% a year earlier. The month-over-month increase was 113 basis points for multifamily and 66 basis points for lodging, representing the largest jumps among property types.
Despite these increases, the highest delinquency rates remained in the office sector, which recorded rates of 10.23% in January, 9.78% in February, 9.76% in March, and 10.28% in April. After a multi-month decline that suggested some improvement, the April rate climbed by 52 basis points, marking a return above the 10% level for the first time since the first month of the year.
Retail was one of the few categories to see a decrease in delinquency rates, with figures of 7.52% in January, 7.49% in February, 7.82% in March and 7.12% in April, reflecting a 60-basis-point drop. Industrial also experienced a slight decline last month. Rates moved from 0.46% in January to 0.34% in February, rising to 0.60% in March, and then falling to 0.50% in April, a 10-basis-point reduction.
I wonder how these numbers compare to private-equity marks…
“The volume of real estate development in the United States has always been related to the availability of funds, rather than to demand. During periods of easy money, excess capacity has been created; during periods of tight money, the decline in new construction has allowed for the absorption of this excess capacity…”
Sam Zell, 1982
“Sulla probably set the scene for Caesar. So one of the things that worries me a lot about Donald Trump is what are the precedents he’s setting for others to use”
Marvin Barth with Grant Williams
Good discussion on Trump, comparisons to Andrew Jackson, Europe’s many problems, China, tariffs, and a number of other topics. Paywalled. Quotes with permission.
A few substack posts by Barth mentioned: You Say You Want a Revolution, Too Many Moving Parts, La Casa Nostra Americana
Grant Williams: “Our societal frameworks are no longer functioning as intended. In that vacuum, Trump is not an anomaly. He’s a symptom. Something about which Marvin has written beautifully in recent months.”
Barth: “You are looking at the shadow of what was and thinking it’s still there.”
“Look, the existing global architecture is broken. It doesn’t work. There’s no retrieving it. It’s not coming back. For all these people who want to get upset and say, oh, they’re destroying everything - I’m like, it’s already dead.
You are looking at the shadow of what it was and thinking it’s still there. It’s not there anymore. It’s gone. Something needs to replace it, and that is going to be a traumatic experiment no matter who does this. I suspect it would be a far worse one if we kept stumbling along the way we were going.
That’s how you do stumble into a World War I type situation where the great empires just go to war and don’t even realize, oh my gosh, I didn’t know this was going to happen. Would have never shot that Archduke.
…we’re living through revolutionary change that was going to happen whether it was Donald Trump or somebody else…”
That reminded me of this :
“If today, thinking it over calmly, we wonder why Europe went to war in 1914, there is not one sensible reason to be found, nor even any real occasion for the war. There were no ideas involved, it was not really about drawing minor borderlines; I can explain it only - thinking of that excess of power - by seeing it as a tragic consequence of the internal dynamism that had built up during those forty years of peace, and now demanded release.”
Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday
Grant Williams
Grant Williams is one of the most sober people around finance, and he definitely does not have TDS (fyi his discussion with Barth might trigger those who do, even though both are mild in any critiques), but - like me - Grant is bothered by Trump’s blatant grifting (and if you’re reading this you should know that I’ve spoken out against corruption by Biden and Obama and Bush and Clinton etc. People need to stop checking the letter after someone’s name!)
“this absence of consequence is what troubles me the most”
Grant Williams:
“I look at the graft and I look at the pardons for people like Trevor Milton and Justin Sun and all these, let’s call it grifters. They are grifters.
The Nikola thing is extraordinary to me. That was straight up fraud, no matter which way you look at it…He only got four years in the first place, but now he’s out, full pardon. I look at that stuff, and of all the things that are going on, that to me is the big problem because you demean the unimpeachability of the office. Once you’ve done that, once you’ve lost that, it’s open season for anybody that can’t remove the man. Well, guess what? Now you can attack the office. That’s the thing that really grates for me. That and the lack of any consequence.
This is not a Trump thing by any means. Let’s be clear about that. We go back to Obama and the ‘08 financial crisis. Obama had the mandate and the opportunity to really stick it to wrongdoers, and he completely gave them a pass. Whether that was Hank Paulson driven, I suspect he was a big voice in that. I don’t know. But this absence of consequence is what troubles me the most because that’s how you undermine a society built on the rule of law that has been the foundation.
Property rights, the rule of law, has been the foundation of western society. I can see it being chipped away. That’s the thing, beyond all Trump’s bluster, I can get past that easily as it turns out, because I have the ability to read pieces like yours [Barth’s] that bring me back to the reality of this, and the previous parallels and say, look, it’s happened before. The world didn’t end. There are ways through this. But I struggle to get past this denuding of the office itself. Without an office, what are we really doing here? Where do we look to for leadership, for probity, for all these things that have stood for so much for so long?”
Barth on Europe: “Do you understand what you’re buying?”
(Barth lives in Europe)
“the exact same things that I said were tearing apart American society are tearing apart societies all across Europe, and their answer to that is to shove it in the closet, to pretend it doesn’t exist, and Germany is a classic case.”
“I am pro-Europe. I want Europe to succeed. I want the European Union to succeed. But I can tell you, it will not succeed on the path it’s going. That’s all I’m saying. They really need to radically adjust course or it will blow up, and that’s in no one’s interest. It’s certainly not in the U.S. interest.”
“Look, the UK could not defend itself from a missile attack right now. The UK cannot significantly project force. The greatest example of that was the Libyan and Syria campaigns where the U.S. had to lead from behind. Or, even better, the only other significant military in Europe, France. France is famous for its interventions in Central Africa. They can’t do any of them without American transport. Europe is incapable of defending itself or projecting power, and in the long run, it doesn’t have resources and it ain’t contributing much in terms of innovation. So, without the U.S., Europe is literally nothing.
I know this is offensive to Europeans. But I’m sorry, you did it. It’s your fault. You are the ones who didn’t invest. You’re the ones, to your point, haven’t created innovative systems or a system of governance that allows for innovation to take place to make the maximum use of all the brilliant people who live here in Europe. 350 million people, come on. Surely you should be able to create more, people. Why are all those people leaving to go to America to start their companies?…And so, that’s what is the underlying problem. So, when you see these European leaders like Friedrich Merz say, “Well, we can’t rely on America and we’re going to do it all ourselves.” Good luck to you, hope that you get there in the next 10 years, because it’s going to take... You spend 10% of GDP on defense. You might achieve that in 10 years, but they’re not going to.”
“if investing in green infrastructure was the key to growth, Europe would be the top growing economy in world”
“Now, Germany has been the bulwark against European debt crisis this whole time because even if Italy and Portugal and Spain and increasingly France are clearly unsustainable, the idea that you have Germany behind them at only 60% debt to GDP is the big savior here. But now, Germany has said, “No, forget that, we’re going to spend everything,” but look at what they’re spending on. To get this debt break passed, they have to devote 20% of that 500 billion euros to green infrastructure. Now, whatever you feel about environmentalism, I don’t want to criticize you or otherwise, but if investing in green infrastructure was the key to growth, Europe would be the top growing economy in world…Europe is in serious, serious trouble, and yet, markets are rallying around this. They think that somehow, spending a bunch of money you don’t have on things you can’t afford is somehow going to lead to a good outcome here. It ain’t….when I watched Euro rally up 109, I’m just like, “Do you understand what you’re buying?””
For a more optimistic view of Europe’s future, it’s discussed a bit in this podcast with the CFR’s Brad Setser.
Setser: “You could argue [the tariffs are] incoherent, in the sense that it doesn't target those countries that are producing goods where the U.S. might have some industrial overlap. We put really high tariffs on Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, both of which produce garments at the low end of the price spectrum. There is no realistic world where the U.S. is going to start producing those kinds of garments. We're tariffing them because low-wage Asia is too poor to buy U.S. goods, which are higher in the price point. They buy mostly Chinese goods, which are lower on the price spectrum, ;and they supply us with relatively inexpensive goods that we don't make ourselves. Same thing with tariffing banana exporters and that kind of thing…it doesn't pick and choose those deficits that might matter in an industrial sense.”
Mike Green: ”Yeah, I think this is part of what everybody is reacting to, right? We can kind of understand why - actually, to be totally fair, I think you and I would both agree that the Chinese surplus with the world is actually something that does need to be addressed. The manner in which he chose to approach it doesn't seem to have worked is I guess the easiest way to put it.”
“You need to provide the right incentives and don’t worry about the details because the market will take care of those. That’s how I look at the world. Now, we live in a world as you point out, where we are trying to fight the fight of the day. It’s the direct results of having previously tried to micromanage the economy. Every policy has unintended consequences.”
Axel Merk:
Brussels is “trying to figure out how can they circumvent the will of the people.”3
“Europeans just don’t get it when it comes to why Trump rose in the U.S. You have very similar drivers in Europe, there’s slight differences, but the so-called establishment is still ignoring it.
In the latest survey in Germany, the populist party on the right, the AFD was calling that they would get the highest number of votes if there were an election held today. They’re of course not part of that government, which means that governments are not addressing the real concerns that people have and they haven’t articulated it.
J.D Vance was shredded in Europe for being so rude. Of course he was rude, but one of the things he said that was absolutely on point, Europe needs to decide what it wants to be, whereas the populist leaders in Europe give folks a vision, you can disagree with it, but they give them a vision that’s appealing. The so-called elite does not. They just say what we do is reasonable, put up with it. That is not how you get people on your side. Of course you have some tremendous challenges…
They haven’t had that discussion that they really need to pivot. The European bureaucracy shows no signs of letting up of being more accountable. Now, in some ways, of course that’s politics as usual. We love to blame Washington if the wrong guy or girl is in the White House. Similarly, Europe, when you have problems, you love to blame Brussels. The problem in Brussels is, that the criticism is warranted. I’ve talked to politicians in Brussels. They’re really more focused on how to ignore dissent and keep on with their bureaucracy than actually instituting some reforms that make the government more accountable.
I mean, if you look at a key thing about Trump’s goals is to go back to basics that the federal government shouldn’t be involved in this many things and have the government accountable. Now you can argue about how it’s implemented and some nuances and whatnot, but that overall drive in Europe, there is none of that. If anything, there are discussions that the most functional institution in Europe is the ECB and that the ECB might take on a bigger role. And so they’re trying to figure out how can they circumvent the will of the people. And then of course, Europe more so than other places in the world, has a demographic nightmare on their doorstep…
The thing is, the US system is a flexible one. We can adjust. The Constitution is designed to adjust. Europeans are rigid. And so when you have disruptors in Europe, I allege the risk of breaking things are much higher.”
“This freezing of Russian central bank assets after the Ukraine invasion and the subsequent appropriation of the interest payments on that $325 billion of assets changed the calculus for every central bank in the world. Every single one of them now knows that there are a set of circumstances under which the U.S. government will confiscate your sovereign reserves, period.”
Forecasts
Nice anecdote Dan Rasmussen loves to relate, from his book, The Humble Investor:
“The man who would go on to become the youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in economics, Kenneth Arrow, began his career during World War II in the Weather Division of the US Army Air Corps.11 The division was responsible for turning out long-range weather forecasts.
Arrow ran an analysis of the forecasts and found that his group’s predictions failed to beat the seemingly naïve approach of just relying on past historical averages. He and his fellow officers submitted a series of memos to the commanding general suggesting that, in light of this finding, the group should be disbanded and its manpower reallocated.
After months of waiting in frustration for a response, they received a terse response from the general’s secretary. “The Commanding General is well aware that the forecasts are no good. However, he needs them for planning purposes.””
“High yield spreads are a very good predictor of economic growth.”
The periodic US default freak-out has started early
Freak out? Not in the above chart.
“According to Barclays, the outstanding volume of CDS on US debt has climbed by almost $1bn this year, to $3.9bn”
$3.9 Billion? Seriously? That’s like 1 day of Fed QE.
And who are the counterparties on these bets?
“Overall, the current prices of the CDS and the relevant Treasury bond implies a default probability of just above 1 per cent, according to Barclays. On the other hand, the low cheapest-to-deliver bond price means that the payout ratio is MUCH higher today, at about 80 times.”
Sounds like picking up pennies in front of a steamroller again.
Since I skipped school the day they covered USA CDS, a reader had a good question:
“When you post Net Notional CDS Swaps is $3.9 bill and 1% chance of default, does that imply the amount of underlying debt being covered is about $390 billion or is that only $3.9 bill covered?" to which I’ll add, “If the payoff is 80 to 1, is the implied risk $312B? Or some other number entirely?”
Of course, if it is $390 billion, that’s a bit more than 3 months worth of Fed fun coupons.
Another Rasmussen quote I identified with:
“I loved the idea that in investing, you're studying the past to derive the lessons that you could learn to make better decisions - to be a better investor in the future - and if those lessons were right, if you were a good historian, you could profit more than others, and I loved that idea. I think that's what got me really excited about going into investing after college, even though I was coming from a history background, not an economics or accounting one.”
My version is “Those who remember history are condemned by those who repeat it.”
“The reason to care about private equity is its outsized power and the damage it has done and is set to continue to inflict, not just upon employees and customers of private-equity owned companies, but as we’ll see, increasingly upon its investors. That includes public pension funds, who have accounted for an estimated 30% to 35% of total private equity commitments.”
“Keep in mind that many of these public pension funds, such as CalPERS and the Kentucky Public Pensions Authority, have government guarantees of pension obligations, meaning taxpayers are on the hook if fund investment performance falls short.
As for their raw power, consider: private equity has for decades been the largest source of fees to Wall Street and top white shoe law firms. Contacts inform me that private equity has also provided more than half the professional fees to McKinsey, Bain and BCG since the early 2000s. In its pre-crisis IPO filing, KKR stated that was the fifth biggest employer in the US via the companies it owned…
One might wonder why it has taken investors so long to escape private equity cult programming. The industry, in its very early years as “leveraged buyouts” in the 1980s, earned spectacular returns. Finding overdiversified conglomerates and selling them for more than the value of their parts was easy; the hard part was winning the takeover fight, particularly since Wall Street was not keen about siding against big corporations, who were lucrative clients. A LBO debt crisis (masked by the much bigger S&L crisis) of the early 1990s led to a fundraising drought, which meant that those who were able to buy corporations had little competition and generally got very good bargains. So a glory period of vintage 1995 to 1999 deals ensued, and private equity biz has been running on brand fumes for quite a while since then.”
“Private equity’s best days are over”
“Private equity has seen its best days...They can’t exit. Exits are so tough,” [Egyptian billionaire] Sawiris told the Financial Times. “[Investors] are so frustrated. They are telling them [buyout firms]: ‘I haven’t seen any returns, you haven’t returned any cash to me in the last five, six years’.”
Sawiris took particular aim at the use of “continuation funds” to recycle capital — a tactic whereby private equity groups, instead of selling an asset to another owner or publicly listing it, move the asset into a new fund where they still maintain control.
“Continuation funds is the biggest scam ever because you say ‘I cannot sell the business, I’m going to lever it again’,” Sawiris said…Continuation vehicles have grown increasingly popular in recent years, surging about 50 per cent to hit a record $76bn last year”
…and many more. The FT comments are usually better than the articles.
Via Grant’s:
“Bloomberg relays that announced share repurchase programs reached $233.8 billion last month, trailing only April 2022’s $242.7 billion for the largest single month dating to 1984”
Kris Sidial
“This type of price action is completely indicative of what you see in bear markets, right? You don't see this in bull markets - some of the nastiest rallies come in bear markets, so I'm looking at this from a vol standpoint, and I'm looking at these flows, this is more affirmation than anything. If the market would have taken its time, and based, and leveled, and flows slowly came in and came out, that would be different. I'd probably have a different case - like, maybe we are bottoming, but when you give me you know nine straight days of just consistent buying and TWAP4 orders coming in the order book, and you're looking at things like - okay, this probably is indicative that things are going to go lower. One of the big reasons again, from a flow standpoint, that I personally think that equities are going to go lower is that I don't think the reflexive bid that is needed to drive equities higher is there anymore.”
“The interesting thing about this whole go-around was that everyone was bearish, but everyone was positioned bullish”
Nice short take here on Wall Street hypocrisy - in this case regarding Silicon Valley Bank - with Danny Moses and Bethany Mclean:
“CoreWeave is preparing to raise about $1.5bn in debt that could be used to refinance part of its massive liabilities just weeks after the artificial intelligence data centre operator listed in New York to a muted reception from investors…CoreWeave had about $8bn of total debt on its balance sheet as of December 2024. The majority was raised through private credit deals with investors such as private equity group Blackstone and hedge fund Magnetar Capital at high interest rates of between 11 and 15 per cent.”
Landman, Season 2
Or maybe it’s Ozark, Season 5. Quite a saga.
Aretha Franklin, Duane Allman and King Curtis
After hearing Allman’s playing on “Hey Jude,” Jerry Wexler had become very interested in him. In January 1969, he brought Duane and the entire Fame rhythm section up to Atlantic Recording Studios in New York to cut several songs that would appear on Aretha Franklin’s album This Girl’s in Love with You. Duane played on two tracks: “It Ain’t Fair” and “The Weight,” the latter featuring Duane’s slide work throughout. “The Weight” was released as a single, eventually peaking at Number 3 on the R&B charts, as well as reaching the Top 20 on the pop charts. The other song, “It Ain’t Fair,” features a beautiful sax solo played by King Curtis.
According to Atlantic’s session notes, Duane also played on a King Curtis session that took place in New York either right before or immediately after the Aretha sessions. Just where and when Allman and Curtis met is unclear. What is clear is that they instantly struck up a friendship that would last for the short remainder of Curtis’s life.
“…King Curtis was murdered in New York City. On Friday the 13th, Curtis had gone to do some work on a brownstone he owned on West 86th Street. Upon exiting from the side of the building, he heard a man and woman arguing on the front steps. Angered by this disturbance taking place on his property, Curtis confronted the couple. When he did, the young man turned away from the woman, walked down the steps toward Curtis, pulled out a knife, and stabbed the saxophonist in the heart.
“Curtis had a horrible temper,” says Joel Dorn. “[Songwriter] Doc Pomus was always telling him, when Curtis would get mad, ‘Watch yourself, man. That temper’s gonna kill ya.’ And he was right. He ended up dying because he couldn’t let shit go. If somebody did something he didn’t like, boy, he didn’t care who it was.”
The day of the funeral, Atlantic Records closed its offices. Held at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Manhattan, the service was a testament to the music community’s admiration for King Curtis. Duane was there, of course, as were Brook Benton, Delaney Bramlett, Ornette Coleman, Aretha Franklin, Dizzy Gillespie, the Isley Brothers, Arthur Prysock, Stevie Wonder, and more than a thousand others. The Reverend C. L. Franklin—Aretha’s father—directed the service. Stevie Wonder sang; the Kingpins played “Soul Serenade”; the Reverend Jesse Jackson spoke; and Aretha closed the service with the sadly appropriate gospel song “Never Grow Old.” Duane was in no condition to contribute anything musical to the proceedings. He simply sat with the rest of the congregation, crying.”
A nice 10-minute Whitney Webb clip…
"It would be nice if the FBI would explain why Epstein's other residences were not raided, like the Zorro Ranch property in New Mexico - never raided."
Epstein "was kept around by elite figures because he was very good at helping them evade taxes, and was very good at money laundering, and had a very intimate knowledge of the offshore banking system, where a lot of these families historically hide their money..."
"The Trump administration could have put out information related to Epstein's White House visits during the Clinton administration, which you think again would be politically expedient for the Trump administration, but there's no way they'll touch that."
"All my life," he said, "I have been strangely, vividly conscious of another region—not far removed from our own world in one sense, yet wholly different in kind—where great things go on unceasingly, where immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the destinies of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as dust in the balance.”
Algernon Blackwood, The Willows
“As a current resident and one who also spent a good portion of my childhood in TN, what has happened in Nashville has been especially disconcerting. I remember getting concerned way back in 2018 which just shows you how COVID accelerated underlying trends that were well on their way. In many ways I see Nashville and Austin as ground zero for the speculation infestation. The 284 miles from Johnson City to Nashville is lined with billboards advertising new homes as well as advertisements for local outfits who buy all and any types of housing…” - Melody Wright
“Sulla was a Roman general, I think it was about a 100 BC, maybe not that. No, it’s like sixties BC. Anyway, he thought the Republic was in disrepair and that there was too much corruption and all this. So he marched on Rome. He was the first to do this. He marched his army on Rome, took it over, made himself dictator, and reformed the whole system. After, I think it was 10 years, just gave it all up and retired to Naples. You could have that. But the problem with that is that Sulla probably set the scene for Caesar” - Barth
The beginning of a great address by N.S. Lyons to the 2025 Civitas Canada Conference, Ottawa, May 3, 2025:
“As it happens, the official theme of this conference is “Freedom and its Discontents: Liberal Democracy at a Crossroads.” That is a timely theme indeed. Because I think it isn’t too extreme to say that, all around the Western world today, democracy is under assault — even that it risks extinction. It risks extinction because the authorities that run our societies seem to find the practice, values, and very spirit of democracy to be increasingly intolerable.
In France, where the ruling government maintains power despite being the most widely hated in decades, the most popular candidate of the most popular political party has been barred from challenging that government in upcoming elections, on legal grounds that are openly political.
In Romania, when the “wrong” outsider candidate appeared poised to win an election, authorities simply canceled the election outright and then had him arrested, the unelected national security state inventing entirely unsupported excuses about foreign meddling to justify their coup d'état against the democratic process.
In Germany, the state has now begun the process of banning the country’s most popular party, supported by more than a quarter of the voting population, in order to avoid facing any real political opposition. “We did it in Romania, and we will obviously have to do it in Germany, if necessary,” is how a former European Commissioner confidently foreshadowed events on live television a few months ago.
One gets the sense that the honest view of our exasperated political elites is as captured in a Bloomberg News headline from last year which read: “2024 is a year of elections, and that’s a threat to democracy.”
In country after country, governments are moving to desperately tighten their grip over the people they rule, sharply curtailing freedom of speech and access to information, and using alleged threats to security and stability to justify granting themselves emergency powers, weaponizing the law, criminalizing dissent, and suppressing any meaningful political opposition.”
“A Time-Weighted Average Price (TWAP) order is an algorithmic/bot order request type that employs a strategy of executing buy or sell trades at regular intervals during a predetermined time frame.”
On Trump…I have wondered if his experience as a”Trump 1” just left him jaded about the office itself. I mean, the hyenas attacked from day one, and never really let him “be the president “…..I wonder if “Trump 2” is just him kinda saying “Oh yeah, well how do you like me now?”.
I'm a huge fan of Grant Williams. He is a great thinker in my opinion and a mind for this generation. Whatever we think about what's happening we are living "real-time" in history. And, thank you.