if it wasn't clear before the IPO & Fable lockdown, currency is no longer welfare. fundraising is for political privilege, and we're not watching massive celebration of debt for autonomy. there is a clear moral contest over equity, over possessing natural right to own as much land, raise as much of an army, etc. a trillionaire is manifesting not because there is a trillion-dollar object to be flipped, but a commuter toll of a lifetime. wrt Anthropic/Fable, messing around with rhetoric and finance until USG intervenes is as positional and purposeful as SBF's attempt to outcompete CZ. considering conversations in 2023-4, there's been an explicit goal of depriving public of such means of information and persuasion, basically a coordinated bloc of debtors accusing their creditors of moral inferiority rather than concede repossession. Blue skies research is the opposite, an amoral inquiry of effective control, and we even moralize these creditors as angels to material progress. takeaway for me is that the former clearly assembled a moral movement, while the latter is juggling the lesser of evils for moral stasis. the stakes are higher & offline, so favors will be more consequential, as much as shakedowns for the privilege, but at a certain point of paper wealth the only drive is strategically divesting it for uncontested moral position (i.e. being left alone at the top), which becomes more valuable than ever. if there's more opensource diffusion, all the more resilient moral upside at cost of asymmetric position, all the more moderate circumstance for innovative debt, and the casino booms. any further moral brinksmanship will mint more trillionaires who never spend a trillion. people will never stop aspiring to be left alone at the top, which means all the more thrill for everyone else.

0 reply

0 recast

3 reactions

Beef 🥩 Profit margin during COVID: $2 Profit margin now: $1000 🤑 500X 🐄 🐮 cowabunga

0 reply

0 recast

2 reactions

Here is why oil prices have pulled back some in recent weeks and have yet to reach the prices analysts first predicted when the war in Iran began at the end of February. - China has cut imports by 40%, instead having refiners produce less and relying more on alternative forms of energy. - USA and other oil producers outside the Middle East have increased production and export levels as much as possible. - 400 million barrels of oil have been authorized for release from strategic oil reserves across the world, typically around 2 million barrels a day. US oil inventories haven't been this low since 2003. - A small number of oil tankers have able to get through the Strait of Hormuz by turning off their transponders and going "dark". - Saudi Arabia has pushed their east-west pipeline to the max in order to load tankers on its west coast more than previously. - Modern global economies are more resilient and require significantly less oil per unit of GDP than they did during the energy crises of the 1970s.

2 replies

1 recast

17 reactions

No fun https://www.nbcnews.com/business/energy/may-inflation-report-gas-prices-iran-rcna349059

5 replies

0 recast

16 reactions

Get ready for food prices to go through the roof

2 replies

0 recast

8 reactions

Feel like I’m hearing or seeing the big IPOs marks the top narrative everywhere… spaceX pushing the conversation. https://x.com/tejparikh90/status/2058507369277956240?s=46&t=TVy9rDl3UkuxmVj4e18bOA

0 reply

0 recast

3 reactions

US consumer sentiment hit its lowest level ever this past week. According to The Kobeissi Letter, consumers see inflation rising to 4.8% over the next 12 months. Since PPI is now at 6%, I think 4.8% is a conservative estimate. Gas prices seem to have stabilized at current levels, but there's no deal with Iran, and oil reserves worldwide are about to get very low.

0 reply

1 recast

4 reactions

Trump and the rest of the Epstein class are going to have to choose: do they want a real estate economy or a world war economy? "Both" is their current answer and it's unsustainable: - up to ~$1.5 trillion in CRE and multi-family loans were made in 2020/2021 with very low rates which are set to expire in 2026/2027 - they're hoping the Fed rates come back down first so they can refinance. But ... Trump. Iran war. Energy crisis. Petrodollar crisis. So they are stuck and can't lower rates, and may have to raise them again, but even if not, the risk to the big institutional home buyers is the sustained duration of already high rates. They don't have 30 year mortgages, they have shorter term debt that gets refinanced regularly. - it's possible this causes a cascade of liquidations where institutional buyers become sellers and flood local markets with the missing supply that's been locked up by these funds. This could be caused by negative debt yields if they fall below debt-service coverage ratio limits. - there's potential legislation that could stop institutional buyers from purchasing SFRs going forward which would also help though they wouldn't be forced to sell existing inventory. - all this could possibly, if we're lucky, lead to a situation in several years where regular people can buy a first home again, if we can survive the crash financially ourselves. I would love to buy my family a home before I'm 50 🤞 but it's impossible today. Something has to give with the cost of living crisis. How do you see it playing out?

3 replies

0 recast

13 reactions

10 year bonds in the USA hit 4.667% today. Economists think 5% is when things start to break. Inflation is ramping up very quickly. The market is expecting the Fed to raise interest rates. All of this is happening because Trump and Netanyahu started a war in the Persian Gulf. Things aren't looking too rosy out there. https://youtu.be/kaCcevHAu78?si=CAmMf2C_COXViHQv

1 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

Taps the mf sign… hedonic adjustments y’all

1 reply

1 recast

5 reactions

Ooof

0 reply

0 recast

1 reaction

seems fair to extend the time value of money, that future value has to be compounding interest over as many periods, to a proximate value of money, or the spacetime value of money that requires distant value to be compounding interest in the logistics of its return to right here and now. realistically, this should be growing degree of discernment and nonfungibility between funds, a growing degree of localizing passive flows where and when it cannot be greater value in the infrastructure maintained to infinity. there is a goal for the sprawl of risk offering greater mobility as well as perpetuity, and as AI becomes more executor to testators, that is where grading of fitness to risk becomes more critical. that is where a persona of a crew becomes the likelier candidate for investment/insurance. this also raises a question of superintelligent politics. if the autonomous allocator is biased to merit-gated familial communism and product-gated local socialism, the highest detente of government and capital allocation resembles more of a weighted index of share in lower governments managing risk. the homestead thoughtform becomes the most memetically shiny object of capitalistic thrill. https://x.com/seldon_seen/status/2052750954412355652?s=20

0 reply

0 recast

2 reactions

2 replies

0 recast

5 reactions

From Kobeissi Letter: "March PCE inflation, the Fed's preferred inflation measure, rises to 3.5%, the highest since August 2023. Core PCE inflation rises to 3.2%, the highest since November 2023. In the first month of the Iran War, US inflation hit a 3-year high. April's data will be interesting." The core number being that much higher means tariffs are still making their way in and that this just coincidentally is occurring when gas prices are going up. I think a lot of people may have been able to take this in stride in March and the beginning of April due to tax refunds. Those who own stocks may also "feel" more wealthy due to the psychological effects of unrealized gains, but this is a dangerous mindset to have imo. The one piece of good news I have seen in this area is that FedEx and UPS are offering people tariff refunds. I didn't look too far into the details, but I would imagine this is for goods ordered from overseas direct to your door.

0 reply

0 recast

1 reaction

US national debt has now passed the size of the entire US GDP for the first time since WWII.

4 replies

0 recast

17 reactions