Thankful The World Hasn't Ended...Yet
As of last check, my 25 Stocks I’m Watching For 2025 are beating the S&P by a little more than 45% this year still. And I’m already preparing my list of 26 names I’ll be watching for the upcoming year, to be published next month for paid subscribers.
This week in Our Bullshit Economy highlighted a few things. On Wednesday I published on the growing absurdity of the media’s “blame the consumer” narrative. I highlighted Ryan McMaken’s argument that pundits are now scolding ordinary Americans for saving money, brown-bagging lunches, or keeping their phones a little longer—all to deflect from decades of policy malpractice.
We’re Approaching The “Blame the Consumer” Stage
The idea that consumers should feel guilty for not propping up corporate earnings is becoming more deranged as the economy weakens, and the commentary trying to guilt people into spending is only going to get worse.
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I also dug into the sudden surge in odds that Kevin Hassett could replace Jerome Powell as Fed Chair. Markets immediately cheered what they perceived as guaranteed rate cuts, but the deeper issue is the erosion of any pretense of Fed independence. If Hassett is chosen because he’ll cut into elevated inflation, it signals a central bank increasingly shaped by political priorities rather than price stability. Investors love easy money on day one, but they rarely appreciate what it means when institutional credibility starts to slip.
Kevin Hassett's Rate Cut Inflation Inferno
Fraud was another theme this week as I resurfaced The China Hustle, now streaming for free. The documentary captures the brazen China-based frauds that helped launch my career in short selling—and it’s a reminder that as credit tightens, we’ll see similar cracks appear in U.S. companies that have been hiding weak fundamentals behind accounting smoke and mirrors. The cycle always exposes what the boom allowed to masquerade as legitimate.
I wrapped the week with a two-hour conversation with Peter Schiff that started off casual and quickly escalated into him lighting up Bitcoin, MicroStrategy, CNBC, and just about every institution in between. From his skepticism of Bitcoin’s long-term viability to his view that central bank distortions have baked in a crisis bigger than 2008, it was vintage Schiff: sharp, unapologetic, and wildly entertaining.
Peter Schiff Goes Nuclear On Bitcoin, Saylor And CNBC
Bottom line: the narratives are cracking. Consumers aren’t the problem, the Fed is drifting toward political capture, fraud is resurfacing as the tide goes out, and every week the gap between economic reality and the stories used to paper it over gets harder to ignore. Happy fucking Thanksgiving…
Here’s what else is new on the blog:
Stocks Surge as Investors Take Victory Lap Around a Sinkhole
Kamala’s Memoir: Inside The Battle To Control Our Authoritarian Future
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