Booker is Wed, Hassett to Fed, Consumer is Dead.

 

UNFTR Weekly Roundup

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Watch the video version of this newsletter.   Max Notes

The Polymarket odds are severely stacked against my personal pick to be the next Fed chair. Kevin Hassett, the head of the National Economic Council is leading with a 71% chance. My guy Stephen Miran is sitting at a dismal 1%, barely edging out Barron Trump. This lightweight who predicted in May of 2020 that COVID deaths would reach zero by the end of the month and said Brexit was a great idea is somehow smoking the guy who is already a board governor, has been making the rounds on any talk show that will take him, wrote the white paper that designed Trump’s entire tariff agenda and another detailing how to quite literally dismantle the Fed and put it under the exclusive authority of the president.   Who am I to argue with Polymarket?    Even nuttier is the fact that Trump would have to replace Miran with Hassett because it’s the only position that will theoretically be available since Trump’s gambit to fire Dr. Lisa Cook was struck down by the courts.   I’ve paid about as much attention to Hassett as I have to Howard Nutlick Lutnick and Peter Navarro because Lutnick is an apologist and a grifter, and Navarro used to source an economist named Ron Vara in his writings (which is an anagram of his last name).   So I’ve been watching Hassett with greater scrutiny of late, which is why I was keen to see him spin holiday sales on Face the Nation over the weekend. The White House has been trotting him out to tell the American public that these aren’t the droids they’re looking for when staring at grocery bills and gas prices. In fact the lazy news media was filled with the same talking points over the weekend that Black Friday sales set a record and the consumer is back, baby! Perhaps you’ve heard the same spin. Here’s what it looks like:   Black Friday sales hit a whopping $11.8 billion, which is up 3% to 4% over last year. And online sales were actually up 8% to 9% according to multiple sources that were echoed from Forbes to Bloomberg to CBS. The coverage is nearly identical across mainstream sources, which is par for the course in our topical news feed. The only alternative headline that got as much attention was the 800% increase in AI driven online sales, which means consumers are taking to ChatGPT and Gemini among others to scour the internet for the best holiday shopping deals. I sense a cottage industry in the making fake-training LLMs on shopping deals.   As usual, the more interesting story is just below the surface. In-store traffic was reportedly down 3.6%, prices were 7% higher and total volume was down 1%. CNN at least did some math to note that the upper end of the K-Shaped economy was responsible for driving much of the demand for higher priced goods. In other words, sales were down because of inflation.   And this is the graph that tells the whole story.

Source: MacroMicro   Everything we buy these days is on credit. That’s just how it is. Third quarter credit card balances surged again to an all time high of $1.23 trillion so there’s little doubt that Q4 figures will continue on the same trajectory.   And yet there was Kevin Hassett, the mouthpiece of the moment in full audition mode for the top banking job in the world telling us that the price of groceries are down and in some states even gas prices are starting to fall. He even went so far as to say that the reason Black Friday sales were so great is because “people feel like they have more money in their pockets.”   You wouldn’t let this man run a local credit union let alone the Federal Reserve. But here we are.

Other things I’m obsessing over… Today is Cyber Monday! Get 20% off UNFTR merch and coffee with code CyberMonday ! Whenever I watch Senator John Kennedy doing his stupid Foghorn Leghorn code switching bullshit, I like to remember that he used to be a Democrat who spoke like a normal person. When I read Destiny of the Republic, the story of President James Garfield and his assassin Charles Guiteau, I was both captivated by his life story and incensed by his murder. Garfield’s story became somewhat of a personal fascination, as did his ne’er do well vice president, Chester Arthur. The latter because he changed his ways upon becoming president and the former because he was (IMO) the most qualified person to lead the republic. Death by Lightning, the Netflix adaptation, isn’t quite as good as the book but it’s worth a view. It’s good enough that it left me angry all over again.  Cory Booker certainly has a type. He just married Rosario Dawson’s doppelganger in a surprise ceremony after a ‘whirlwind’ courtship. That’s as close to an official announcement that he’s running for president as you can get. Actually, performing a record long congressional speech (that accomplished nothing) and writing a book about it (due out in March!) is even closer.  -Max

Killer Left Take of the Week

KLTW goes to JT Chapman of Second Thought once again. It’s ST’s second KLTW because this channel is oh too good. This week Chapman targets PragerU’s use of AI, and how the company is leveraging the dismantling of the federal government’s oversight to infiltrate state education departments. Our kids are going to be so stupid.   Watch: Slop School is Here

This Week on the UNFTR Podcast

Max took the week off for the holidays and is four pounds heavier and still hungover. We will resume our normal schedule shortly (as if we ever had one).

Chart of the Week

Known colloquially as “The Buffet Indicator” the U.S. stock market cap as a percentage of GDP was traditionally used as a guide for whether the stock market was fairly valued. Buffet’s comfort range was supposedly between 75% and 90% with anything over 120% being overvalued. Currently the indicator is 224%. That seems about right.

Source: MacroMicro

Headlines

We Should Take the Fucking Sign off the Statue of Liberty Already Trump’s mass deportation plan was one of the primary reasons he won re-election. That’s who we are. We’re still separating kids from their families, in fact we’re setting records. Kids in cages made for bad optics, so now ICE just doesn’t let anyone in to see them. Problem solved. America is and has always been a deeply racist place. It’s actually the American way.   From the article: “Since the start of this year, some 600 immigrant children have been placed in government shelters by ICE, according to government data. That figure, which has not been previously reported, is already higher than the tally for the previous four years combined. And it is the highest number since recordkeeping began a decade ago.”   ProPublica: ICE Sent 600 Immigrant Kids to Detention in Federal Shelters This Year. It’s a New Record   Permanent Ink Dostoevsky wrote that, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” What does that make America? Or our proxy prisons in places like El Salvador? Our black sites where torture is the only law of the land?   From the article: “In gangs, as in prison, reputation is survival and so is identity. Tattoos are testimonies of a moment, a reminder of something that seemed to matter at a formative time. But time doesn’t stand still. Rather than acknowledge that tattoos may be a product of coercion or a means of survival—or the remnant of an abandoned path—U.S. immigration enforcement uses tattoos as proof of dangerous intent, transforming the body into a physical criminal record that supersedes context, history, and testimony.”   Baffler: Marked for Life: Tattoos criminalize El Salvadoran refugees in the eyes of Homeland Security   Trump Is Such a Dumbass the Chinese Media Tries To Make Him Sound Smarter I cringed through this entire article. It never occurred to me that an economic adversary (they’re not, this whole narrative is itself ludicrous) would have its state mouthpiece make Trump sound smarter to make it seem like their guy had a worthy adversary.   From the article: “This was a pattern throughout the Chinese-language version of the meetings. Trump’s joshing and joking — considered the regrettable behavior of a barbarian — was simply removed from the official accounts of the meeting, as it is irrelevant to the political process and considered to be in bad taste.”   Truthdig: Making China Great Again

Resources

Pod Love “Millions of people have trusted 23andMe with their most intimate data—but what happens when a company holding 15 million DNA profiles goes bankrupt? In this episode, you’ll hear highlights from bipartisan House and Senate hearings exposing how genetic data can be hacked, shared, retained, and even sold under current U.S. law. Using testimony from lawmakers, legal experts, and 23andMe leaders, this episode uncovers the alarming gaps in federal privacy protections and explains why your genetic information—and even your relatives’—may be far less secure than you think.”   Congressional Dish: 23AndMe and the Sale of Your DNA   Book Love Also, I was this many days old when I realized that Candice Millard wrote River of Doubt as well. Wow. What a storyteller. Buy them both for holiday presents!    “The extraordinary ‘New York Times’-bestselling account of James Garfield’s rise from poverty to the American presidency, and the dramatic history of his assassination and legacy, from bestselling author of ‘The River of Doubt,’ Candice Millard. For a man forced into the presidency, the legacy of James Garfield extended far beyond his lifetime, and ‘Destiny of the Republic’ revisits his meteoric rise within the military and government with meticulous research and intimate focus. Garfield was a passionate advocate of freed slaves, a reformer at odds with Republican power brokers and machine politics, a devoted father, and a spellbinding speech-giver.”   Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard    Unf*cker Comment of the Week Diann basically wrote (what should be) the Democratic Party platform for 2028.   From @diannesposito9703: “Take the caps off social security. Stack the court or impeach the Supreme Court who sold themselves. Save our postoffice. Get another fair doctrine act where news must be truthful to be called news. Get rid of ICE crap. Get rid of private prisons. Pass a reasonable immigration law. Pass mental health. Medicare for all. Hold Trump and cronies responsible for all crimes. Make them pay back what was stolen from the treasury. Pass laws on AI and bitcoin. Make Trump pay everything back he stole or did quid pro quo.”

Progressive Corner

Progressive Spotlight: Starbucks Workers United. Starbucks Workers United, born in Buffalo in 2021, is striking across the U.S. for better wages and conditions, challenging Starbucks’ labor practices and gaining political support in their fight for fair contracts.   Progressive Organization of the Week: The Marshall Project. “The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. We have an impact on the system through journalism, rendering it more fair, effective, transparent and humane.”   Check Out the UNFTR Directory of Progressive Resources for More

UNFTR Member Question of the Week

Question: Name a song that perfectly encapsulates this political era.

Kastag7: Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie (when will it fucking end...)   StifflersMama: Lord of the Flies (Elton John)   BluCrayons:  FDT(Fuck Donald Trump) - YG & Nipsey Hussle   april_in_fl: 3 Little Pigs by Green Jelly because we have to rebuild brick by brick

Manny Faces: America Part 2 - Locksmith   Drew: Idiots Are Taking Over - NOFX   BriX: Boom! - System Of A Down   GreyGrendel: Badlands by Bruce Springsteen

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