Late Sunday afternoon, while most people were debating dinner plans, The Macro Butler was busy on Asharq Bloomberg TV, breaking down the latest twists in the global oil market—and explaining how a return to good old-fashioned gunboat diplomacy could shake supply lines and send prices sailing in 2026.

The interview has been translated into Arabic.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-asharq-bloomberg-tv-096

Nvidia is back at the epicenter of the U.S.–China tech war—where a single export restriction can erase $4.6 billion overnight and turn AI from a growth story into a geopolitical weapon. This isn’t about chips anymore; it’s about power, policy, and capital flows in a fractured world.

https://www.tiktok.com/@the.macro.butler/video/7587034570046868754

If you want to understand how to manage risk, not headlines, and position portfolios when geopolitics collide with markets, this is exactly what we teach at The Macro Butler Financial Academy.

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Like a Christmas fairy tale delivered two months late by the Shutdown Circus, the long-lost Q3 GDP print finally arrived: an eye-popping 4.3%, up from an already feverish 3.8% in Q2 and fueled by consumers doing their patriotic duty—spending. It’s ancient history dressed as fresh data, but in a world where every Fed sneeze is treated like scripture, the regime still expects applause for the hottest quarterly growth since Q3 2023.

According to the Ministry of Truth—also known as the BEA—the 4.34% Q3 GDP miracle was proudly achieved by consumers spending harder, government spending returning to virtue, and exports behaving themselves, while investment was quietly ushered out of the room.

Consumption alone did most of the heavy lifting (+2.39%), fixed investment barely showed up (+0.19%, mostly data centers), inventories stopped collapsing (only -0.22%), and net trade was carefully “normalized” to a polite +1.59%. Even government, long a drag, was rebranded as a growth engine (+0.39%). In short: fewer imports, more spending, and just enough statistical choreography to declare victory.

At first glance, the surge in personal consumption looks like a flashing red light for the Fed—proof of an unexpectedly resilient U.S. consumer. But step behind the curtain and the story changes. The bulk of the increase came from healthcare, where spending jumped a staggering 0.76% at an annualized rate.

This wasn’t discretionary exuberance; it was households paying higher health-insurance bills.
Unsurprisingly, inflation followed the script: the GDP price index leapt to 3.8% in Q3 from 2.1% in Q2, crushing the 2.7% forecast. PCE inflation rose to 2.8% from 2.1%, while core PCE came in at 2.9%—right on estimates, but hotter than Q2’s 2.6%. Translation: consumers aren’t splurging, they’re being squeezed—and the price indices noticed.

Overall, it was a stronger-than-expected print—but for all the wrong reasons. With the U.S. labor market deteriorating as it has for much of 2025, this fairy-tale growth number is unlikely to move the needle as the US economy moves in an inevitable inflationary bust.

Despite the officially proclaimed economic “heaven,” the people on the ground seem less convinced. The Conference Board’s December consumer confidence shows the Present Situation falling sharply, while Expectations merely held steady after an unusually generous revision—pulling the headline index down. As Confucius might say: when the statistics shout prosperity but the household sighs, wisdom lies in trusting the sigh.

Beneath the incense smoke, the message is clear. The Present Situation soured as views on business conditions turned negative for the first time since September’s labor scare. The labor market’s weakness continues to spread quietly. Confidence slipped across nearly all ages and incomes; only the very young still hope, and only the Silent Generation grew more cheerful—perhaps because silence expects nothing.

As the Master would say: when optimism survives only in revisions, and reality erodes across households, the cycle has already turned.

After the “stellar” GDP fairy tale and a limp, caffeine-deprived 2Y auction, the Treasury decided to spice up the last coupon week of the year with a $70bn serving of 5-year paper.

The auction cleared at a high yield of 3.747%, up from 3.557% in November and the highest since July, while still managing to tail the When-Issued by 0.1bp. Call it consistency: this marks the 6th tail in the last 7 auctions—a streak that would make even the most loyal dog proud.

The bid-to-cover slipped to 2.35 from 2.41 last month—the weakest since September and now below the recent average of 2.36.
The internals didn’t help the optics. Indirect bidders (read: foreign buyers) took down just 59.5%, the lowest share since September and well under the recent 61.8% average.

But fear not—the auction was rescued by Directs. Taking down 31.7%, they delivered the highest allocation on record, stepping in just in time to keep the show on the road.

As a result, dealers were left holding just 8.8%—tied for the lowest on record, proving that when the music stopped, they barely had a chair at all.

Overall, this was yet another ugly, tailing 5-year auction, and it would have looked outright disastrous had Directs not heroically stepped in at the last minute.

As more investors awaken to the uncomfortable truth that the once “risk-free” asset is now anything but—and one of the riskiest assets to own—yields will be forced much higher in the Year of the Fire Horse, or the Fed will resort to Yield Curve Control, a path that would only hasten the debasement of paper IOUs relative to real assets.

Resource wars, fragile currencies, and portfolios built to survive chaos.

The Macro Butler joins the Financial Sense podcast to explain why the old playbook is broken—and how anti-fragile assets, real resources, and hard truths matter more than ever in the Banana Republic era of finance. Listen in and rethink what “safe” really means.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-the-financial-sense-9f2

As the Educated-Yet-Idiots of Europe—and much of the Western world—continue to blame Putin for every hardship born of their own Malthusian fantasies, a gentle seasonal reminder is in order:
‘Dear Europeans, please reserve your blind faith for Santa.’

Merry Christmas. 🎄

The slow-motion decline of the U.S. empire can be summed up with a straight face and a crooked chart: out of a 275-million working-age population, only 164 million are employed, 34 million of them part-time, while a convenient 103 million are waved away by the BLS as “not in the labor force,” leaving a laughable 4.6% unemployment rate that magically ignores reality north of 20%. Manufacturing—the thing that once built wealth—has shrunk from 30% of jobs in 1950 to 8% today, replaced by an explosion in Education and Health Services (from 4.8% to 17.8%), while Americans somehow became neither smarter nor healthier, just fatter, sicker, and more administrated. Government payrolls remain bloated, productivity hollowed out, and the economy now runs on debt, consumption, and statistical theater. And just as the professional class finished lecturing blue-collar workers to “learn to code,” AI showed up to code them out of a job. Welcome to the golden age—measured, revised, and massaged for your convenience.

The superficially stable job market has been the only thing keeping this ship of fools afloat, but the rise in the conveniently massaged unemployment rate from 4.0% when Donald Copperfield took office to 4.6% today suggests the hull is already leaking—and it’s only a matter of time before millions are submerged by waves of debt, delusion, and disastrously poor decisions.

As Santa warmed up the reindeer and checked his naughty-and-nice list, the U.S. Treasury squeezed in one last act of festive finance, auctioning $44 billion of 7-year notes—the final bond sale of the Jubilee Year. The paper landed with a 3.930% yield, up from November’s 3.781% and the spiciest since July. In a rare holiday miracle, it actually stopped through the when-issued yield by 0.3 bps, snapping a streak of four straight tailing auctions. Ho ho ho—miracles do happen, just not often in bond markets.

The bid-to-cover jumped to a merry 2.509, up from 2.459 last month and the strongest since July—just a hair below the six-auction average of 2.520, because even markets enjoy suspense. Unlike earlier auctions this week, where foreign buyers apparently took an early holiday, Indirects showed up in festive spirit, snapping up 59.04%, up from 56.65% and the strongest since August. Directs joined the party too, grabbing 31.6%, just shy of an all-time record, leaving Dealers holding a skinny 9.34%—their lightest stocking since July. Turns out even in bond land, Santa still rewards good behavior.

Overall, it was a stronger auction than the soggy offerings earlier in the week—but let’s not confuse seasonal cheer with structural sanity. It is only a matter of time before more investors realize that what was once marketed as a risk-free asset has quietly morphed into the riskiest thing in the portfolio, thanks to the tireless efforts of the Educated Yet Idiots and their ever-ripening banana-republic policies running the global show.