The Shitshow Macro Weekly Prep Podcast for Monday February 24, 2025 is out:
-The new post titled Statecraft 101: What It Is, What It Was, What It Became, and How the Trump Doctrine Is Changing (Fixing) It has now been published for premium subscribers (with a preview for free subscribers):
open.substack.com/pub/robertplew…
Domestic Politics:
-Dan Bongino was named as the FBI’s Deputy Director on Sunday evening.
--Totally out of left field, unexpected, and brilliant.
-Kash Patel was also named as the acting ATF director over the weekend.
--If you’ve been paying attention over the past month, this has tended to be the first step towards totally shutting an agency down (see: CFPB).
-In the new Statecraft post published Sunday, I went into detail about the reasons that acquiring Greenland is for far more than the lulz. There are NatSec, spheres of influence, commercial shipping lanes, and commodities that would be very beneficial to the US.
--I discussed this being mentioned in one of the investment newsletters that I receive on Friday’s podcast, but didn’t give the details.
--The mine is called The Kvanefjeld Rare Earths Project, and it’s estimated to have 1.01 Bt of Rare Earth Ore (REO) grading 1.1%, and 593 Mlbs of uranium - and the entire project was almost sold to China. Instead, it was shuttered because the Greenland government was worried about radiation exposure from mining the uranium.
--The company that owns the mine is traded on the Australian exchange, so it’s only available for direct investment if you have access to that market - for now.
It is being reported that MSNBC has let Joy Reid go from their lineup.
-California got a lot of (deserved) heat this year for taking over a month to count votes from the November election.
--Now it appears, according to their EAC transmission to Congress, that this state with 9mm eligible mail voters mailed out 22mm ballots.
--From @Shilohmarx :
x.com/Shilohmarx/sta…
--The data table will also be included in the show notes.
-Similarly, the DOJ has charged 3 Pennsylvania municipal officials with creating fake voter registrations.
--The USGOV Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent out an email over the weekend to all Federal employees asking for a pretty simple task.
--They were asked to respond with a bullet point list of 5 things they accomplished last week, to cc their manager, and to have it back by Monday at 11:59 pm.
--The media had a field day, various agency managers and heads sent out their own emails to their subordinates as a response, and several tirades from GOV employees were sent to the media.
--All over 5 bullet points, that Musk later said were partially a way to weed out what some assume to be 100s of thousands of non-existent people who are listed as USGOV employees.
-In an interview on Fox last week, US Commerce Secretary Lutnick flat out said that Trump’s goal is the eliminate the IRS:
--Clip shared by @OcrazioCornPop :
x.com/OcrazioCornPop…
War/Military:
-Zelensky is being, well, Zelensky. Over the past 48 hours he’s claimed that all US taxpayer money sent to him was in the form of grants and so he doesn’t recognize any debt. He’s waffled back and forth on signing a mineral deal agreement, and now he says that he’ll resign if UKR can join NATO.
--If you’ve never read the cable back to DC from the (then) US Ambassador to Moscow and (now) CIA Director William Burns titled “NYET MEANS NYET: RUSSIA'S NATO ENLARGEMENT REDLINES,” here it is:
wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/0…
-US Defense officials told Fox News that the Houthis (Yemen) have now fired their first ever Surface to Air (SAM) missile at a US F-16 fighter jet.
Religion:
-This is an interesting historical tidbit.
--Apparently St. Malachy (1094-1148) made a prophecy (that has been called a hoax by some) that there would only be 112 popes, the final would be Peter the Roman, and his pontificate would precede the destruction of the City of Rome:
armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/rel…
-The new post titled Statecraft 101: What It Is, What It Was, What It Became, and How the Trump Doctrine Is Changing (Fixing) It has now been published for premium subscribers (with a preview for free subscribers):
open.substack.com/pub/robertplew…
Domestic Politics:
-Dan Bongino was named as the FBI’s Deputy Director on Sunday evening.
--Totally out of left field, unexpected, and brilliant.
-Kash Patel was also named as the acting ATF director over the weekend.
--If you’ve been paying attention over the past month, this has tended to be the first step towards totally shutting an agency down (see: CFPB).
-In the new Statecraft post published Sunday, I went into detail about the reasons that acquiring Greenland is for far more than the lulz. There are NatSec, spheres of influence, commercial shipping lanes, and commodities that would be very beneficial to the US.
--I discussed this being mentioned in one of the investment newsletters that I receive on Friday’s podcast, but didn’t give the details.
--The mine is called The Kvanefjeld Rare Earths Project, and it’s estimated to have 1.01 Bt of Rare Earth Ore (REO) grading 1.1%, and 593 Mlbs of uranium - and the entire project was almost sold to China. Instead, it was shuttered because the Greenland government was worried about radiation exposure from mining the uranium.
--The company that owns the mine is traded on the Australian exchange, so it’s only available for direct investment if you have access to that market - for now.
It is being reported that MSNBC has let Joy Reid go from their lineup.
-California got a lot of (deserved) heat this year for taking over a month to count votes from the November election.
--Now it appears, according to their EAC transmission to Congress, that this state with 9mm eligible mail voters mailed out 22mm ballots.
--From @Shilohmarx :
x.com/Shilohmarx/sta…
--The data table will also be included in the show notes.
-Similarly, the DOJ has charged 3 Pennsylvania municipal officials with creating fake voter registrations.
--The USGOV Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent out an email over the weekend to all Federal employees asking for a pretty simple task.
--They were asked to respond with a bullet point list of 5 things they accomplished last week, to cc their manager, and to have it back by Monday at 11:59 pm.
--The media had a field day, various agency managers and heads sent out their own emails to their subordinates as a response, and several tirades from GOV employees were sent to the media.
--All over 5 bullet points, that Musk later said were partially a way to weed out what some assume to be 100s of thousands of non-existent people who are listed as USGOV employees.
-In an interview on Fox last week, US Commerce Secretary Lutnick flat out said that Trump’s goal is the eliminate the IRS:
--Clip shared by @OcrazioCornPop :
x.com/OcrazioCornPop…
War/Military:
-Zelensky is being, well, Zelensky. Over the past 48 hours he’s claimed that all US taxpayer money sent to him was in the form of grants and so he doesn’t recognize any debt. He’s waffled back and forth on signing a mineral deal agreement, and now he says that he’ll resign if UKR can join NATO.
--If you’ve never read the cable back to DC from the (then) US Ambassador to Moscow and (now) CIA Director William Burns titled “NYET MEANS NYET: RUSSIA'S NATO ENLARGEMENT REDLINES,” here it is:
wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/0…
-US Defense officials told Fox News that the Houthis (Yemen) have now fired their first ever Surface to Air (SAM) missile at a US F-16 fighter jet.
Religion:
-This is an interesting historical tidbit.
--Apparently St. Malachy (1094-1148) made a prophecy (that has been called a hoax by some) that there would only be 112 popes, the final would be Peter the Roman, and his pontificate would precede the destruction of the City of Rome:
armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/rel…
Markets/economics:
-Shitshow Macro subscribers know the importance of the 10-year rate, how it’s more of a guide for borrowing rates than the Fed Funds Rate now, and the importance that Bessent and Trump have put on bringing it down.
--Here’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with Martina Bartiromo on Sunday talking about the 10-year (and borrowing rates) being down 5 weeks in a row now:
x.com/RapidResponse4…
-NVDA earnings are coming up this week, so be prepared for anything.
-German stock market futures and the Euro both edged up after the conservatives won the German election soundly, as we’ll cover more below.
-US market futures are all up as of the time of this writing (Sunday evening).
-Crude oil is at $70.36
-Gold is at $2,942
-BTC is at $95,971.17
-A great thread to end this section for today comes to us from @biancoresearch :
--Jim jokingly calls it the Mar-a-Lago Accords (MALA), but all jokes aside this thread is an excellent view into what to expect for macro investors trying to read the tea leaves of where this new administration may be heading:
x.com/biancoresearch…
Business:
-Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway now has $334 billion in cash and cash equivalents based on their latest filing, according to @MacroEdgeRes
-Microsoft announced a massive breakthrough in quantum computing with its new Majorana 1 chip, and other reports are showing that the company is cancelling some of its data center leases.
--Long time Shitshow Macro listeners may remember a heads up several months ago along these lines.
Geopolitics:
-German elections were today (Sunday), and the “conservative” parties stole the show.
--Unfortunately, while that is a show of public support and political movement, it does not mean that it will translate to who gets to rule the nation. Europe is like that, as we saw in France recently.
--Both CDU and AfD got nearly 2x or more votes than the Green party, but again, don’t hold your breath.
--The other 7 parties made deals to “ice out” AfD, and in European politics parties have to form “coalition” governments in order to have any say. Will AfD get a seat at the table with 20.4% of the vote (the CDU won 28.6% and Green party won just 12.3%.
--To explain what has to and may happen now, here’s a thread from @6Voodoo :
x.com/6Voodoo/status…
-A chart of the total vote breakdown (that was given the same night, a foreign concept to Arizona and California) is in the show notes.
--Here’s another take on the election and what it means from Armstrong Economics, whose Socrates computer forecasted this result down to a “t” well in advance.
armstrongeconomics.com/international-…
Social dynamics/societal/culture war/Legal:
-The DOJ filed a misconduct complaint against the federal judge in Washington for potential bias due to her conduct during the hearings on the Trump administration’s military ban of trans soldiers:
theepochtimes.com/us/doj-files-m…
-A kid with a 4.4 GPA and a 1590 SAT score was hired directly by Google for a PhD software engineer position but was declined by 16 out of 18 colleges (including 5 University of California schools).
--Now, he’s suing for the racist policies that prevented him from going to college.
--Video shared by @Persianjewess :
x.com/persianjewess/…
Conspiracy-y:
I’m far from the only one thinking or saying this, but it’s worth saying out loud for those who don’t see this vantage point.
We mentioned on Friday how the European nations that have been trying to escalate the UKR war at every step announced last week that they would not send troops in without a US presence. You can call the next paragraph a conspiracy theory if you want, but believing that would require you to be ignorant of actual history.
It is strongly expected, and by strongly I mean a near certainty, that if NATO and/or US troops end up officially operating inside of UKR, something will “happen” that will be used to invoke Article 5 and pull all of NATO into the country, which will likely pull China, Iran, and possibly others in, which will be WWIII.
-Shitshow Macro subscribers know the importance of the 10-year rate, how it’s more of a guide for borrowing rates than the Fed Funds Rate now, and the importance that Bessent and Trump have put on bringing it down.
--Here’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with Martina Bartiromo on Sunday talking about the 10-year (and borrowing rates) being down 5 weeks in a row now:
x.com/RapidResponse4…
-NVDA earnings are coming up this week, so be prepared for anything.
-German stock market futures and the Euro both edged up after the conservatives won the German election soundly, as we’ll cover more below.
-US market futures are all up as of the time of this writing (Sunday evening).
-Crude oil is at $70.36
-Gold is at $2,942
-BTC is at $95,971.17
-A great thread to end this section for today comes to us from @biancoresearch :
--Jim jokingly calls it the Mar-a-Lago Accords (MALA), but all jokes aside this thread is an excellent view into what to expect for macro investors trying to read the tea leaves of where this new administration may be heading:
x.com/biancoresearch…
Business:
-Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway now has $334 billion in cash and cash equivalents based on their latest filing, according to @MacroEdgeRes
-Microsoft announced a massive breakthrough in quantum computing with its new Majorana 1 chip, and other reports are showing that the company is cancelling some of its data center leases.
--Long time Shitshow Macro listeners may remember a heads up several months ago along these lines.
Geopolitics:
-German elections were today (Sunday), and the “conservative” parties stole the show.
--Unfortunately, while that is a show of public support and political movement, it does not mean that it will translate to who gets to rule the nation. Europe is like that, as we saw in France recently.
--Both CDU and AfD got nearly 2x or more votes than the Green party, but again, don’t hold your breath.
--The other 7 parties made deals to “ice out” AfD, and in European politics parties have to form “coalition” governments in order to have any say. Will AfD get a seat at the table with 20.4% of the vote (the CDU won 28.6% and Green party won just 12.3%.
--To explain what has to and may happen now, here’s a thread from @6Voodoo :
x.com/6Voodoo/status…
-A chart of the total vote breakdown (that was given the same night, a foreign concept to Arizona and California) is in the show notes.
--Here’s another take on the election and what it means from Armstrong Economics, whose Socrates computer forecasted this result down to a “t” well in advance.
armstrongeconomics.com/international-…
Social dynamics/societal/culture war/Legal:
-The DOJ filed a misconduct complaint against the federal judge in Washington for potential bias due to her conduct during the hearings on the Trump administration’s military ban of trans soldiers:
theepochtimes.com/us/doj-files-m…
-A kid with a 4.4 GPA and a 1590 SAT score was hired directly by Google for a PhD software engineer position but was declined by 16 out of 18 colleges (including 5 University of California schools).
--Now, he’s suing for the racist policies that prevented him from going to college.
--Video shared by @Persianjewess :
x.com/persianjewess/…
Conspiracy-y:
I’m far from the only one thinking or saying this, but it’s worth saying out loud for those who don’t see this vantage point.
We mentioned on Friday how the European nations that have been trying to escalate the UKR war at every step announced last week that they would not send troops in without a US presence. You can call the next paragraph a conspiracy theory if you want, but believing that would require you to be ignorant of actual history.
It is strongly expected, and by strongly I mean a near certainty, that if NATO and/or US troops end up officially operating inside of UKR, something will “happen” that will be used to invoke Article 5 and pull all of NATO into the country, which will likely pull China, Iran, and possibly others in, which will be WWIII.
X (formerly Twitter)
rapid response (@rapidresponse4) / X
theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2025/02/1…
White Pill:
To take a break from anything that could possibly be deemed political in a rational world, here is a video of babies stretching after being released from their swaddles:
x.com/TRHLofficial/s…
Macro takeaways/lessons for the week:
-If you don’t know much about Dan Bongino, his appointment at FBI now gives a clear indicator of 2 different things. Firstly, this Trump administration is serious about its succession policy - if you take out “the boss” at any level, their replacement will be far more savage. Secondly, revealing the truth of what J6 really was is a priority. Apokalypsis may not be pretty, but it is necessary.
-Musk has telegraphed that he would use his Twitter “what did you accomplish today” for GOV employees since the campaign, and yet it seems many were totally blindsided. This is one of the minor aspects of how harmful it is to society when the media refuses to report about him, Trump, and what they say/do honestly.
-In the immediate aftermath of the German elections, it looks like they will follow France’s lead and ignore their populace & stay on the same path despite voters showing it is not what they want. How democratic of them.
Implications:
I cannot tell you how psyched I am about Bongino and Kash in at the 1 and 2IC positions at FBI. Dan has been one of the loudest and most unrelenting voices trying to demand answers about the J6 pipe bomber, which shows potential to be one of the things that unravels all of the lies about what that day really was.
I’m very happy right now, but will probably move to cautiously optimistic by the morning. Too many let downs over the years.
The Weekly Read (Monday):
Problem Solving 101: A Simple Book for Smart People by Ken Watanabe
This book was recommended to me many years ago by my mentor who taught me Lean management implementation, and who inspired me to push on to get my Six Sigma and other certs. Short, simple, to the point, and incredibly beneficial, it is a guidebook to help people build a foundation through which to approach the problems they may face in their personal or professional lives.
Here’s a starter: If you are a Federal employee who gets an email to respond with 5 bullet points of what you accomplished the previous week, respond. This should not be something that takes days to come up with an answer for.
The time that it takes to send an angry tirade email to the media or to post one on social media could be better spent actually completing the task that you were presented with.
Links mentioned in the show:
Intro & Outro music: Blind by Mike Amabile and Run Over Twice
open.spotify.com/track/6SG99nL3…
Media Defamation Lawsuits Crowdfunding Link
givesendgo.com/1APMediaDefama…
Thread with Short and Long Explainer Videos About Our Lawsuits and the J6 False Narratives
x.com/RobertPLewis/s…
German Election Voting Breakdown by Party
(Chart won't display on X but is in the original Sub post)
California Sends 22mm Mail Ballots Despite Only 9mm Eligible Mail Voters
(Chart won't display on X but is in the original Sub post)
“The List”
Geopolitics: The Duran, Aurelian Substack (specific to diplomacy), Armstrong Economics blog/newsletter
Economics/Trading: Tree Rings (Luke Gromen newsletter), MacroOps newsletter, Gold Goats & Guns (Tom Luongo newsletter), Armstrong Economics blog/newsletter, Macro Edge Research (jobs and business data points)
Domestic politics: The Duran, Epoch Times, Conservative Treehouse, The President’s Daily Brief, Dark to Light with Tracy Beanz and Quite Frankly, Truth Over News Substack, Pippa’s Pen and Podcast (Substack), Armstrong Economics blog/newsletter
War/Military: SOFX Newsletter, The Duran
White Pill:
To take a break from anything that could possibly be deemed political in a rational world, here is a video of babies stretching after being released from their swaddles:
x.com/TRHLofficial/s…
Macro takeaways/lessons for the week:
-If you don’t know much about Dan Bongino, his appointment at FBI now gives a clear indicator of 2 different things. Firstly, this Trump administration is serious about its succession policy - if you take out “the boss” at any level, their replacement will be far more savage. Secondly, revealing the truth of what J6 really was is a priority. Apokalypsis may not be pretty, but it is necessary.
-Musk has telegraphed that he would use his Twitter “what did you accomplish today” for GOV employees since the campaign, and yet it seems many were totally blindsided. This is one of the minor aspects of how harmful it is to society when the media refuses to report about him, Trump, and what they say/do honestly.
-In the immediate aftermath of the German elections, it looks like they will follow France’s lead and ignore their populace & stay on the same path despite voters showing it is not what they want. How democratic of them.
Implications:
I cannot tell you how psyched I am about Bongino and Kash in at the 1 and 2IC positions at FBI. Dan has been one of the loudest and most unrelenting voices trying to demand answers about the J6 pipe bomber, which shows potential to be one of the things that unravels all of the lies about what that day really was.
I’m very happy right now, but will probably move to cautiously optimistic by the morning. Too many let downs over the years.
The Weekly Read (Monday):
Problem Solving 101: A Simple Book for Smart People by Ken Watanabe
This book was recommended to me many years ago by my mentor who taught me Lean management implementation, and who inspired me to push on to get my Six Sigma and other certs. Short, simple, to the point, and incredibly beneficial, it is a guidebook to help people build a foundation through which to approach the problems they may face in their personal or professional lives.
Here’s a starter: If you are a Federal employee who gets an email to respond with 5 bullet points of what you accomplished the previous week, respond. This should not be something that takes days to come up with an answer for.
The time that it takes to send an angry tirade email to the media or to post one on social media could be better spent actually completing the task that you were presented with.
Links mentioned in the show:
Intro & Outro music: Blind by Mike Amabile and Run Over Twice
open.spotify.com/track/6SG99nL3…
Media Defamation Lawsuits Crowdfunding Link
givesendgo.com/1APMediaDefama…
Thread with Short and Long Explainer Videos About Our Lawsuits and the J6 False Narratives
x.com/RobertPLewis/s…
German Election Voting Breakdown by Party
(Chart won't display on X but is in the original Sub post)
California Sends 22mm Mail Ballots Despite Only 9mm Eligible Mail Voters
(Chart won't display on X but is in the original Sub post)
“The List”
Geopolitics: The Duran, Aurelian Substack (specific to diplomacy), Armstrong Economics blog/newsletter
Economics/Trading: Tree Rings (Luke Gromen newsletter), MacroOps newsletter, Gold Goats & Guns (Tom Luongo newsletter), Armstrong Economics blog/newsletter, Macro Edge Research (jobs and business data points)
Domestic politics: The Duran, Epoch Times, Conservative Treehouse, The President’s Daily Brief, Dark to Light with Tracy Beanz and Quite Frankly, Truth Over News Substack, Pippa’s Pen and Podcast (Substack), Armstrong Economics blog/newsletter
War/Military: SOFX Newsletter, The Duran
Great thread on how the thing in front of you isn't always "the thing" at hand (re: Fed layoffs and "what did you accomplish" email - in reality, a minimum of accountability the public feels Feds have been lacking):