Redacted (for His Pleasure)
December 31, 2025
Hello everybody, I hope you are all doing well out there!
It's the final day of 2025. What a year! I hope everybody was able to accomplish their goals. We had an incredible year marked with new experiences, new houses, new schools, and so much to be thankful for.
Rates, Again: The Fed cut rates again in December, bringing the target range down to 3.50%–3.75%. If you feel whiplash, you’re not crazy — we are living through an era where monetary policy is asked to do what politics refuses to do: stabilize everyday life. But a central bank can’t legislate housing supply, healthcare affordability, or civic trust. It can only adjust the cost of money, and hope that politics follows. Hope is not a policy.
Healthcare’s Quiet Cliff: Enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies are scheduled to expire at year-end. Without congressional action, millions could face steep premium increases in 2026. This is the kind of policy change that doesn’t look like “drama” on cable news, but it hits like a hammer in ordinary households. History is clear: when bread, rent, or healthcare becomes unaffordable, politics does not become calmer but rather combustible.
The Epstein Files — Released, Then Buried: The administration began publishing Epstein-related materials under a new disclosure law, but extensive redactions angered even the biggest Republican supporters, including Republican lawmakers, and did little to answer the public’s questions. The old propaganda trick is not to hide information — it’s to flood the public with “information” that cannot be interpreted. Redaction can be necessary to protect victims. Partisan redaction is something else: it remembers accountability exists, and then tries to erase it. It remains my expectation that the current administration is so incapable of telling the truth, incapable of governance, that it will eventually bite them.
The Politics of Humiliation: The White House installed new plaques on a “Presidential Walk of Fame” that sharply attack prior presidents, including Democrats and George W. Bush. This isn’t decor; it’s the reality of a sick mind.
The Supreme Court Draws a Line: In a rare setback, the Supreme Court kept blocked the administration’s attempt to deploy the National Guard in the Chicago area “for now.” This is the constitutional immune system doing its job — imperfectly, slowly, and under stress. In every era, the central question is the same: do we govern by law, or by will? Democracies can tolerate a lot of chaos; they cannot tolerate the routine use of force to settle political disputes.
Wishing everybody a safe night to ring in the new year!
Peace & Love Worldwide ✌🏼❤️🌍
anthony
Bellweather Elections
November 30, 2025
Hello everybody, I hope you are all doing well out there!
We successfully launched The Legends Playbook! In the future, it will be fun to share the top 10 lessons from high performing traders, because there is much to learn for creatives and beyond.
Bellwether Night: The off-year elections delivered a national mood-ring: not a prophecy, but a reading. Here’s the historical point: democracies don’t just measure preferences; they measure legitimacy. When elections are trusted, losses sting but the system holds. When elections are distrusted, every result becomes a conspiracy and every institution becomes a target. The real bellwether is not who won—it’s how the losers behave the morning after.
The Shutdown Ends (But the Lesson Doesn’t): The 43-day shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, ended after the president signed a funding bill reopening the government. The immediate impact was economic, but the long-term impact is psychological: citizens adapt to instability. Democracies die from cynicism as much as from coercion. If “government doesn’t work” becomes a permanent belief, then dismantling government begins to sound like “reform.” That is how sabotage gets marketed as virtue.
Tariffs as Executive Power: The Supreme Court weighed the legality of sweeping tariffs justified under emergency authority, a test of how far executive power can stretch without legislative consent. Tariffs are taxes, plain and simple. In constitutional history, taxation without robust representation isn’t just a slogan—it’s a warning label. If a president can impose broad “emergency” taxes with limited oversight, the separation of powers becomes a decorative feature rather than a functional guardrail.
COP30 - the World Without Us: COP30 delivered a compromise deal that increased finance for vulnerable nations but omitted explicit mention of fossil fuels. The U.S. absence is a defining shadow over the negotiations. This is less about culture wars and more like an insurance table: climate volatility raises costs, affects food prices, housing availability, disaster relief budgets, and geopolitical stability. Reality of bad foreign policy charges interest.
Redistricting Arms Race: California’s vote escalated the national redistricting fight. Hostilities are likely to spread as both parties try to secure advantage before 2026. Once again, local elections in 2026 will be critical for the current administration's ability to deliver on its odd political promises, more than the vast majority have already been failures.
Peace & Love Worldwide ✌🏼❤️🌍
anthony
Democratic Erosion
October 31, 2025
Hello everybody, I hope you are all doing well out there!
Shutdown: The government shutdown began October 1, and the consequences quickly shifted from abstract “Washington drama” into real institutional damage. When a republic cannot keep its basic institutions open, citizens learn a dangerous lesson: dysfunction is normal. That lesson compounds. The Government shutdown won't last but a few weeks, but the consequences from an incompetent administration will ripple for months and years.
Monetary Gravity: The Federal Reserve cut interest rates again. In healthy democracies, monetary policy is a steering wheel. In struggling democracies, it becomes a crutch for politics that refuses to solve structural problems. A rate cut can soften the cost of borrowing; it cannot rebuild public trust, lower healthcare prices, or conjure housing supply out of thin air. If your monthly budget feels like it’s been put on a treadmill, remember: the math doesn’t lie—but politicians do.
TPS & the Court: Immigration policy continued its drift away from legislation and toward emergency litigation. The current administration moved to end Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans after the Supreme Court opened the door. The legal issue isn’t just “immigration.” It’s stability: when life-changing policy turns on hurried orders and shifting executive preferences, millions live under a permanent state of contingency. This is not how a confident nation behaves. One should expect additional conflict with this current administration and Venezuela. This is not how a first-world nation behaves, as time will prove.
Loan Forgiveness as Weapon: Student debt relief is being used like a political switch: on for allies, off for enemies. New rules were put in place, aimed at barring groups the administration opposes from loan relief. The underlying pattern is familiar to historians: convert public benefits into conditional privileges. Privatize for the benefit of political allies. Once government programs become tools of reward and punishment, the rule of law quietly becomes the rule of loyalty.
Soldiers at Home: A federal judge in Chicago temporarily blocked the administration’s deployment of federalized National Guard troops in Illinois. America has a long tradition of keeping military power away from everyday domestic governance for a reason. Democracies do not become autocracies overnight; they become autocracies by “just this once” and making exceptions that stack into a new normal. Every time the boundary between civilian law and military force is tested, citizens ought to pay attention.
Wishing everybody a fun and safe holiday season!
Peace & Love Worldwide ✌🏼❤️🌍
anthony
Bella Ciao
September 30, 2025
Hello everybody, I hope you are all doing well out there!
Inflation: The Federal Reserve lowered interest rates this month for the first time since March 2023, citing concerns over weakening global demand and geopolitical instability in energy markets. As mentioned last month, my bet remains grounded in a simple thesis: this administration, like its first term back in 2016, will resort to inflation, scapegoating, and distraction as default policy responses. We’re taking every bet that says the cost of groceries, gas, and America’s debt load will not improve over the next four years. The math doesn’t lie—but politicians do.
Free Speech: When a government begins silencing jokes about political leaders, you’re likely living under a non-democratic regime. I saw this in Turkey, Russia, India, and Saudi Arabia. So when Jimmy Kimmel was indefinitely canceled for mocking the President’s casual reaction to the public assassination of a personal friend, the signs were unmistakable. We must talk seriously about political violence.
Stochastic Terrorism: In October 2020, I warned of America’s growing tolerance for political violence. Since then, we’ve seen attempts to kidnap Governors, break into the homes of political rivals, and normalize calls for bloodshed. Politicians may not issue direct orders, yet casual rhetoric is sufficient to unleash violence. In a civilized society, political expression should not result in physical harm. That’s why, back when Parler exploded with hate speech, I argued the most effective response was not outrage, not attention, but organic discussion. Don't feed the trolls. Don’t click. Don’t share.
Neurodivergence: I vividly recall the infamous 2020 press conference where the President claimed antimalarial drugs like hydroxychloroquine could treat COVID-19—without scientific backing. Unfortunately, the anti-science administration is back with another false claim — that acetaminophen causes autism. Let’s look back on this blunder in five years.
Bella Ciao: History informs us that non-democratic administrations do not fail due to outside factors, but rather due to internal cracks at the foundation.
Hate, ignorance and scapegoating can only drive a government for a finite period of time. Eventually, fail occurs when consolidated power becomes untenable to govern effectively. Approval ratings plummet following degraded standard of living conditions and when the constituents who voted for them is reduced to poverty. Eventually, citizens revolt when elections do not reflect the popularity of ideas. If people cannot readily afford bread or gas; when their healthcare and freedom of expression is stripped; if the average person’s ability to protect their loved ones is sufficiently diminished, that is when revolution occurs.
Americans have more in common with one another than we have differences. So keep reaching over the aisle to shake hands with people of different political persuasions and religious beliefs. Keep finding common ground over family, kids, music, food, art and entertainment, lifting up others, and love of country.
AND keep pressuring politicians to Release the Epstein Files.
Peace & Love Worldwide ✌🏼❤️🌍
anthony