The Shitshow Macro Weekly Prep Podcast for Monday January 27, 2025 is out:
Domestic Politics:
-Economist Dr. Jack Rasmus published a scathing report on the Biden legacy with regards to its economic, geopolitical, and domestic politics.
--The title Biden’s Pernicious Presidential Legacies is an accurate summary of his analysis. It’s worth a read:
jackrasmus.com/2025/01/24/bid…
-Marco Rubio’s “sweeping change” cable sent out at Foggy Bottom (State Dept).
--This, this, and this. He “gets it.”
--“Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions,” Rubio wrote.
--The questions: Does the action make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous?
realclearpolitics.com/articles/2025/…
-Many of us were quite surprised that none of the violent left-wing groups were able to bring the riots that had become commonplace from the 2017 Trump inauguration through the “Summer of Love” 2020 riots.
--Mike Shelby (@grayzoneintel ) was one of the few calling out in advance that it wasn’t going to happen.
--Mike knows his stuff on this front; here’s his top-line assessment of why they weren’t able to muster the resources for another go-round of their shenanigans:
open.substack.com/pub/grayzonere…
-The Army Corps of Engineers are already on the ground in W. North Carolina and at work.
-Week 1. Trump got this done on week 1.
-Here’s a video from @matt_vanswol , who has been sending video from on the ground since Helene hit (unlike the major US media networks, who were mostly absent):
x.com/matt_vanswol/s…
-The Sunday Colombian spat:
--Reports started coming out before the weekend that Colombia was refusing to accept repatriation of its citizens who illegally entered the US.
--Trump posted an ultimatum, followed by restrictions imposed on Colombian officials.
--The President of Colombia reneged in less than half an hour.
--The media and leftist NPCs began pushing a narrative war about “higher priced coffee and flowers” after the Colombian President had already reneged.
--President Trump continued his round of golf unabated.
-It pains me that I even have to explain this, and I don’t think our readers/listeners need this explained, but it seems obvious that sections of the US population do, so here it goes:
--Another ludicrous narrative pushed by the media & leftist NPCs was that egg prices are still high so it’s a Trump admin failure.
--The recently-released egg prices are from December, which was Biden’s tenure.
--Eggs are not laid, harvested, and packaged in the grocery store - there’s a supply chain.
--Supply chains don’t include teleportation machines - there is a process required for things to move from the farm to the grocery store shelves.
--Bringing down the cost of oil (shipping) and natural gas (farming) as well as potash & nitrogen (also farming & food for farm animals, like chickens) will, necessarily, bring down the cost of eggs (and beef and vegetables and fruits and milk and butter and everything else).
--Those pushing the above narrative are bad faith actors, morons who don’t know how anything works, or both.
-The DEA enacted a pre-dawn raid in Aurora, Colorado to round up the Tren de Agura gang members who were taking over apartment complexes and causing mayhem in the city.
--Despite the media and local officials previously swearing this gang wasn’t present and causing these issues, nearly 50 of them were arrested in the raid along with drugs and weapons.
--Short video clip from @libsoftiktok :
x.com/libsoftiktok/s…
-As the J6ers who have been pardoned & released (they are still refusing to release several) are getting situated back home, horror stories about their prosecutions & treatment while in custody are beginning to surface.
--IMO, these are only just beginning, and people are going to be horrified when they learn the reality versus media version of what actually happened in these prosecutions.
Domestic Politics:
-Economist Dr. Jack Rasmus published a scathing report on the Biden legacy with regards to its economic, geopolitical, and domestic politics.
--The title Biden’s Pernicious Presidential Legacies is an accurate summary of his analysis. It’s worth a read:
jackrasmus.com/2025/01/24/bid…
-Marco Rubio’s “sweeping change” cable sent out at Foggy Bottom (State Dept).
--This, this, and this. He “gets it.”
--“Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions,” Rubio wrote.
--The questions: Does the action make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous?
realclearpolitics.com/articles/2025/…
-Many of us were quite surprised that none of the violent left-wing groups were able to bring the riots that had become commonplace from the 2017 Trump inauguration through the “Summer of Love” 2020 riots.
--Mike Shelby (@grayzoneintel ) was one of the few calling out in advance that it wasn’t going to happen.
--Mike knows his stuff on this front; here’s his top-line assessment of why they weren’t able to muster the resources for another go-round of their shenanigans:
open.substack.com/pub/grayzonere…
-The Army Corps of Engineers are already on the ground in W. North Carolina and at work.
-Week 1. Trump got this done on week 1.
-Here’s a video from @matt_vanswol , who has been sending video from on the ground since Helene hit (unlike the major US media networks, who were mostly absent):
x.com/matt_vanswol/s…
-The Sunday Colombian spat:
--Reports started coming out before the weekend that Colombia was refusing to accept repatriation of its citizens who illegally entered the US.
--Trump posted an ultimatum, followed by restrictions imposed on Colombian officials.
--The President of Colombia reneged in less than half an hour.
--The media and leftist NPCs began pushing a narrative war about “higher priced coffee and flowers” after the Colombian President had already reneged.
--President Trump continued his round of golf unabated.
-It pains me that I even have to explain this, and I don’t think our readers/listeners need this explained, but it seems obvious that sections of the US population do, so here it goes:
--Another ludicrous narrative pushed by the media & leftist NPCs was that egg prices are still high so it’s a Trump admin failure.
--The recently-released egg prices are from December, which was Biden’s tenure.
--Eggs are not laid, harvested, and packaged in the grocery store - there’s a supply chain.
--Supply chains don’t include teleportation machines - there is a process required for things to move from the farm to the grocery store shelves.
--Bringing down the cost of oil (shipping) and natural gas (farming) as well as potash & nitrogen (also farming & food for farm animals, like chickens) will, necessarily, bring down the cost of eggs (and beef and vegetables and fruits and milk and butter and everything else).
--Those pushing the above narrative are bad faith actors, morons who don’t know how anything works, or both.
-The DEA enacted a pre-dawn raid in Aurora, Colorado to round up the Tren de Agura gang members who were taking over apartment complexes and causing mayhem in the city.
--Despite the media and local officials previously swearing this gang wasn’t present and causing these issues, nearly 50 of them were arrested in the raid along with drugs and weapons.
--Short video clip from @libsoftiktok :
x.com/libsoftiktok/s…
-As the J6ers who have been pardoned & released (they are still refusing to release several) are getting situated back home, horror stories about their prosecutions & treatment while in custody are beginning to surface.
--IMO, these are only just beginning, and people are going to be horrified when they learn the reality versus media version of what actually happened in these prosecutions.
Jack Rasmus
Biden’s Pernicious Presidential Legacies (print)
Trump’s proposals to radically transform much of US economic and social policy are being rapidly rolled out during the first week of his administration. How much he succeeds or fails in that transf…
--Here’s one (of several) that are starting to see the light of day, from @HanneBlaze64 about the case of Colt McAbee:
theblaze.com/news/exclusive…
--Note: If J6 was really what the media, committee, and DC told you it was, why did the prosecutors twist so many stories, hide Brady evidence, and why was the media wholly uninterested in covering these discrepancies?
-Now that Biden is out of office and gatekeepers have been fired, the “conspiracy theorists” are putting more wins on the scoreboard:
--The CIA finally admitted what everyone knew, that Coof came from the Coof-specific biolab in China. From @Not_the_Bee :
notthebee.com/article/five-y…
--Hunter was given $3mm by a Romanian oligarch to influence US policy
--And a new one, documents now reveal that Hunter Biden’s name and signature are tied to a $60mm fraud investigation. From @zerohedge :
zerohedge.com/political/new-…
-RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard, and Kash Patel all have their confirmation hearings this week.
--Expect the propaganda and “wailing & gnashing of teeth” to be set to max output this week from the media.
--To me, anyone who voted to confirm Biden’s dudes in dresses, incompetents, and/or people who were clearly out of their lane (music PhDs on economic counsels - really?) deserves to be ruthlessly primaried.
--That being said, it should be your primary hypothesis that any “oppo research” dropped on those 3 this week is pure propaganda from those with interests (financial and otherwise) that stand to lose when these 3 are sworn into their appointed positions.
War/Military:
-NATO report (Rutte): all of NATO is being outproduced 4-to-1 annually by RUS:
nato.int/cps/en/natohq/…
-I said on Friday that it seemed the UKR funding being cut was only development; I was wrong, it seems that all UKR aid has been frozen along with the other foreign outflows from the US.
-We recently discussed Zelensky’s call for 200k “peacekeepers” as a condition for a ceasefire, and how that would likely require 150k or more American troops.
--Short-form “hot takes” from pundits will not provide the necessary understanding of the various types of “peacekeeping” efforts there are. It also will not tell you of the long history of difficulties, failures, and finger-drilling that they often entail.
--Using historical “peacekeeping” missions from Northern Ireland to Bosnia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Sarajevo, Sierra Leone, and others, this post from Aurelien walks through the questions that need to be asked/answered first, the political & logistical difficulties (which are myriad), and the historical ineffectiveness of UN “peacekeeping” missions:
open.substack.com/pub/aurelien20…
--“War is simply politics through other means.” -Von Clausewitz
--Full disclosure: My ODA took part in some of the Bosnia operations before I arrived to the team. I was not there in person, but learned plenty about it through “fireside chats.”
--If you’ve not seen The Siege of Jadotville that tells of the political chicanery and logistical difficulty of the very first UN “peacekeeping mission,” it’s a stellar watch:
netflix.com/watch/80041653
-To that end, UKR and its plants in the Western press keep trying to push the “North Koreans fighting in UKR” propaganda. Here’s a bit of a 101:
--The reasoning they keep giving for saying they’ve killed thousands of these troops but can’t show evidence is that, they say, “they burn their faces off after they die.” This is ludicrous on its face (dark pun intended).
--Those who know anything about anything know that RUS and China share the largest border in the world.
--UKR has captured some troops with Asian genotypes that they’ve tried to pass off as North Koreans. These troops, they admit, all had RUS MIL identification.
--If you’ve ever spent time in the former Soviet states that are close to the RUS/China border, you’ve likely noticed some interesting racial mixtures. Some of the women I encountered in Kyrgyzstan were a gorgeous mix of Slavic and Asian features, due to the region.
theblaze.com/news/exclusive…
--Note: If J6 was really what the media, committee, and DC told you it was, why did the prosecutors twist so many stories, hide Brady evidence, and why was the media wholly uninterested in covering these discrepancies?
-Now that Biden is out of office and gatekeepers have been fired, the “conspiracy theorists” are putting more wins on the scoreboard:
--The CIA finally admitted what everyone knew, that Coof came from the Coof-specific biolab in China. From @Not_the_Bee :
notthebee.com/article/five-y…
--Hunter was given $3mm by a Romanian oligarch to influence US policy
--And a new one, documents now reveal that Hunter Biden’s name and signature are tied to a $60mm fraud investigation. From @zerohedge :
zerohedge.com/political/new-…
-RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard, and Kash Patel all have their confirmation hearings this week.
--Expect the propaganda and “wailing & gnashing of teeth” to be set to max output this week from the media.
--To me, anyone who voted to confirm Biden’s dudes in dresses, incompetents, and/or people who were clearly out of their lane (music PhDs on economic counsels - really?) deserves to be ruthlessly primaried.
--That being said, it should be your primary hypothesis that any “oppo research” dropped on those 3 this week is pure propaganda from those with interests (financial and otherwise) that stand to lose when these 3 are sworn into their appointed positions.
War/Military:
-NATO report (Rutte): all of NATO is being outproduced 4-to-1 annually by RUS:
nato.int/cps/en/natohq/…
-I said on Friday that it seemed the UKR funding being cut was only development; I was wrong, it seems that all UKR aid has been frozen along with the other foreign outflows from the US.
-We recently discussed Zelensky’s call for 200k “peacekeepers” as a condition for a ceasefire, and how that would likely require 150k or more American troops.
--Short-form “hot takes” from pundits will not provide the necessary understanding of the various types of “peacekeeping” efforts there are. It also will not tell you of the long history of difficulties, failures, and finger-drilling that they often entail.
--Using historical “peacekeeping” missions from Northern Ireland to Bosnia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Sarajevo, Sierra Leone, and others, this post from Aurelien walks through the questions that need to be asked/answered first, the political & logistical difficulties (which are myriad), and the historical ineffectiveness of UN “peacekeeping” missions:
open.substack.com/pub/aurelien20…
--“War is simply politics through other means.” -Von Clausewitz
--Full disclosure: My ODA took part in some of the Bosnia operations before I arrived to the team. I was not there in person, but learned plenty about it through “fireside chats.”
--If you’ve not seen The Siege of Jadotville that tells of the political chicanery and logistical difficulty of the very first UN “peacekeeping mission,” it’s a stellar watch:
netflix.com/watch/80041653
-To that end, UKR and its plants in the Western press keep trying to push the “North Koreans fighting in UKR” propaganda. Here’s a bit of a 101:
--The reasoning they keep giving for saying they’ve killed thousands of these troops but can’t show evidence is that, they say, “they burn their faces off after they die.” This is ludicrous on its face (dark pun intended).
--Those who know anything about anything know that RUS and China share the largest border in the world.
--UKR has captured some troops with Asian genotypes that they’ve tried to pass off as North Koreans. These troops, they admit, all had RUS MIL identification.
--If you’ve ever spent time in the former Soviet states that are close to the RUS/China border, you’ve likely noticed some interesting racial mixtures. Some of the women I encountered in Kyrgyzstan were a gorgeous mix of Slavic and Asian features, due to the region.
--Ergot, the soldiers with RUS identification that UKR is trying to pass off as N. Koreans are likely just RUS with Asian phenotypes, as a propaganda effort meant to lure NATO directly into the war.
-Reports out of Africa are stating that Operation Hadin Kai (Nigerian military) have captured a senior Boko Haram leader and killed hundreds of his troops in the Bama local government area.
sofx.com/nigerian-troop…
Science/Health:
-Trump’s pick for energy secretary is certainly an upgrade from Biden’s choice.
--Chris Wright is both a scientist and entrepreneur; he studied fusion at MIT, solar at Berkley, and is the founder/CEO of Liberty Energy, a Denver-based fracking company.
--The macro “3-3-3” strategy that likely won Bissent his role at Treasury requires an energy dominance from US production. Wright’s vision to tap the Department of Energy (DOE) R&D to that end is a very, very good sign:
ww2.aip.org/fyi/energy-sec…
-A peer-reviewed study has found that regular use of Ivermectin as a prophylaxis for Coof led to an up to 92% reduction in mortality rate (shared by @TexasLindsay_ )
cureus.com/articles/11185…
--Taken in addition to the various practitioners and anecdotes of people saying that its being found to cure late-stage cancer, I feel we need some Nuremberg-style tribunals for those who vilified this long-used, widely-prescribed drug with an incredible safety profile.
Markets/economics:
-More than 100 S&P 500 listed companies will release their earnings reports this week, including META, Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, Starbucks, Exxon, and Chevron.
-The Fed’s latest monetary policy decisions will be announced on Wednesday.
-As of this writing (Sunday evening), futures for all major US indices are down (in the red).
-Both gold and oil are also down.
-Gold is still elevated, however, at $2,772.20
-BTC is at $102,883.31
-Most currency pairs are staying within their respective ranges, but the USDMXN (peso) is more active than normal, currently at 20.4190
--This is likely due to the Sunday spat between President Trump and the Colombian President
--That currency pair (USDCOP) has been extremely active, currently at 4,236.0389 (+0.31%)
-Canada is publicly asking for the G7 to meet and discuss metals pricing (commodities) to counter the sway that China currently has over the market:
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
-Chinese monthly exports to Saudi Arabia have increased +100% since the US sanctioned Russian FX reserves in 2022.
--This was seen by many as a boneheaded move, and when it proved ineffective, the Biden regime’s choice was to double down on ineffective measures. While ineffective for their stated goal, they are seen as one of the catalyzing drivers that have grown BRICs.
Chart in the show notes.
-It’s not a great time to be in the insurance business.
--First “the shots” took a multi-sigma event number of able-bodied workers out of the labor force, then aging properties began to become an issue (most notably with the Surfside Florida condo collapse).
--As homeowners in NC were given a national stage by President Trump to discuss how their insurance policy claims were denied and Palisades homeowners are expecting an uphill battle, condo HOAs around the country are now speaking out about the difficulty of finding insurance “master policies” for their structures:
finance.yahoo.com/news/insurers-…
Business:
-A Chinese AI company has just released DeepSeek, which is being touted as a competitor to OpenAI that costs a fraction of the price to develop.
--There are a lot of people touting its capabilities; sorry, I’m too much of a China hawk to fall into this until someone has really “looked under the hood.”
--Timing, sometimes, really is everything (WRT the TikTok ban)
--A good question being asked by @FinanceLancelot if it is a serious competitor that doesn’t end up being a nefarious intel gathering operation: what happens to the “AI investment” space in US markets if this blows the incumbents out of the water?
x.com/FinanceLancelo…
-Reports out of Africa are stating that Operation Hadin Kai (Nigerian military) have captured a senior Boko Haram leader and killed hundreds of his troops in the Bama local government area.
sofx.com/nigerian-troop…
Science/Health:
-Trump’s pick for energy secretary is certainly an upgrade from Biden’s choice.
--Chris Wright is both a scientist and entrepreneur; he studied fusion at MIT, solar at Berkley, and is the founder/CEO of Liberty Energy, a Denver-based fracking company.
--The macro “3-3-3” strategy that likely won Bissent his role at Treasury requires an energy dominance from US production. Wright’s vision to tap the Department of Energy (DOE) R&D to that end is a very, very good sign:
ww2.aip.org/fyi/energy-sec…
-A peer-reviewed study has found that regular use of Ivermectin as a prophylaxis for Coof led to an up to 92% reduction in mortality rate (shared by @TexasLindsay_ )
cureus.com/articles/11185…
--Taken in addition to the various practitioners and anecdotes of people saying that its being found to cure late-stage cancer, I feel we need some Nuremberg-style tribunals for those who vilified this long-used, widely-prescribed drug with an incredible safety profile.
Markets/economics:
-More than 100 S&P 500 listed companies will release their earnings reports this week, including META, Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, Starbucks, Exxon, and Chevron.
-The Fed’s latest monetary policy decisions will be announced on Wednesday.
-As of this writing (Sunday evening), futures for all major US indices are down (in the red).
-Both gold and oil are also down.
-Gold is still elevated, however, at $2,772.20
-BTC is at $102,883.31
-Most currency pairs are staying within their respective ranges, but the USDMXN (peso) is more active than normal, currently at 20.4190
--This is likely due to the Sunday spat between President Trump and the Colombian President
--That currency pair (USDCOP) has been extremely active, currently at 4,236.0389 (+0.31%)
-Canada is publicly asking for the G7 to meet and discuss metals pricing (commodities) to counter the sway that China currently has over the market:
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
-Chinese monthly exports to Saudi Arabia have increased +100% since the US sanctioned Russian FX reserves in 2022.
--This was seen by many as a boneheaded move, and when it proved ineffective, the Biden regime’s choice was to double down on ineffective measures. While ineffective for their stated goal, they are seen as one of the catalyzing drivers that have grown BRICs.
Chart in the show notes.
-It’s not a great time to be in the insurance business.
--First “the shots” took a multi-sigma event number of able-bodied workers out of the labor force, then aging properties began to become an issue (most notably with the Surfside Florida condo collapse).
--As homeowners in NC were given a national stage by President Trump to discuss how their insurance policy claims were denied and Palisades homeowners are expecting an uphill battle, condo HOAs around the country are now speaking out about the difficulty of finding insurance “master policies” for their structures:
finance.yahoo.com/news/insurers-…
Business:
-A Chinese AI company has just released DeepSeek, which is being touted as a competitor to OpenAI that costs a fraction of the price to develop.
--There are a lot of people touting its capabilities; sorry, I’m too much of a China hawk to fall into this until someone has really “looked under the hood.”
--Timing, sometimes, really is everything (WRT the TikTok ban)
--A good question being asked by @FinanceLancelot if it is a serious competitor that doesn’t end up being a nefarious intel gathering operation: what happens to the “AI investment” space in US markets if this blows the incumbents out of the water?
x.com/FinanceLancelo…
SOFX
Nigerian Troops Capture Boko Haram Commander ‘Like a Chicken’ in Latest Operation
Troops of the Nigerian Army under Operation Hadin Kai have reportedly captured Abu Iklima, a senior Boko Haram commander, following