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.

While families feasted, the Malthusian-Orwellian European Council quietly cemented its stance on the digital euro on December 23, 2025—paving the way for talks with Parliament and confirming an offline payment mode, a nod to privacy in a world increasingly surveilled.

The ECB has triumphantly finished all the “technical prep work” for the digital euro, and Christine Lagarde assures us that all that’s left is for the ever-efficient political machinery to wave it through. On December 23, 2025, the Council finally adopted its official negotiating stance—setting the thrilling stage for a potential rollout by 2029, assuming the regulators remember to pass the rules by 2026. The digital euro will feature online and offline payments, because nothing says “progress” like peer-to-peer transfers between certified devices that are almost as private as actual cash… for low-value purchases, of course.

Naturally, the ECB insists the digital euro isn’t here to banish cash—fear not, you can still hoard your coins and paper bills. And don’t worry, it’s all perfectly “safe”: holding limits and fancy safeguards are in place to stop anyone from actually moving big piles of money out of commercial banks. Stability guaranteed… or so they say.

https://cryptonews.com/news/eu-digital-euro-offline-digital-euro-payments/

In a nutshell, while Europeans were feasting, the ECB and Council quietly greenlit the digital euro’s “offline privacy mode” and set the stage for a 2029 rollout of its CBDC.

While Wall Street diligently rehearsed its favorite bedtime story about “vanquished inflation”—right on cue with Donald Copperfield’s mid-term spin—the New York Fed governor quietly let the mask slip, admitting what anyone fluent in ‘CPLie’-speak already knew: the November numbers were pure statistical fiction.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/19/ny-fed-president-williams-says-some-technical-factors-distorted-novembers-cpi-reading-downward.html

Everyone with even a passing acquaintance with finance knows government numbers are about as trustworthy as a politician’s forecast—yet they remain the sacred inputs for monetary policy.

Despite openly admitting the data may be flawed, Williams still voted for a December rate cut, while reassuring us there’s no “urgent need” to keep easing.

In other words, monetary authorities are flying blind, proudly steering an economy they can’t properly measure, juggling a softening labor market against inflation figures they quietly concede might be wrong. The perfect recipe for the upcoming inflationary bust which will be remembered as the ‘Trump Stagflation’

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Listen to The Month That It Was in December 2025 from The Macro Butler.

You can now also listen to this podcast on YouTube; Rumble & TikTok.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-month-that-it-was-december-2025

The clock is ticking. In just two days, the limited-time discount for The Macro Butler Academy comes to an end. This is your final opportunity to lock in privileged access to a framework designed to help you understand cycles, cut through narratives, and position capital intelligently in an increasingly unstable world.

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🎉 That’s a wrap for the Jubilee Year! 🌍

The Macro Butler had the privilege of hosting incredible conversations with brilliant minds from around the world.

The guest list is far too long to name (and we wouldn’t want to miss anyone!), but a huge thank you to everyone who invited us.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-2025

The Jubilee Year is coming to a close, and so is the discounted access to The Macro Butler Financial Academy. This is your chance to step inside a framework built to decode macro cycles, expose policy distortions, and protect wealth when narratives fail.

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Since the last FOMC, it’s been obvious that even the Fed doesn’t buy the November CP-Lie—yet the minutes politely confirmed what everyone already knew: a deeply divided committee still arguing over whether weak hiring or sticky inflation is the bigger problem. Most officials still expect to cut rates—assuming inflation behaves—while a few prefer to sit on their hands “for some time,” and several who voted for a cut did so with visible discomfort. Translation: consensus by exhaustion, not conviction. The minutes also revealed the usual schizophrenia—cut rates to save jobs, but don’t cut too much or inflation might notice—and quietly acknowledged that reserves are now “ample,” teeing up Treasury purchases if needed.


https://www.scribd.com/document/974131757/FOMC-Minutes-20251210#download&from_embed

In a nutshell, the Fed doesn’t believe its own inflation data, can’t agree on what’s broken, is already preparing more liquidity—and markets are yawning as if this confusion were business as usual.

While everyone else was stockpiling champagne for New Year’s Eve, Tesla did what it does best when Wall Street clocks out: it quietly dropped a sales buzzkill.
In a rare public move, the company posted its own delivery estimates, hinting that Q4 deliveries may disappoint—about 422,850 vehicles, down 15% year-on-year and well below Bloomberg’s still-optimistic 440,907. A festive reminder that even electric dreams can run low on charge when traders are off duty.

Tesla’s sales skidded early in the year as factories were retooled for the redesigned Model Y—conveniently coinciding with Elon Musk’s cameo as a polarizing figure in the Donald Copperfield administration. Deliveries then spiked to a Q3 record as U.S. buyers rushed to front-run the expiry of the $7,500 EV tax credit, a sugar high Tesla tried to extend by rolling out sub-$40,000, stripped-down Model Y and Model 3 variants.
Even so, the company is heading for a second straight annual decline, with deliveries estimated at 1.6 million—down over 8% year-on-year—and its own three-year outlook now trailing Bloomberg consensus.

In a nutshell, Tesla rang in the New Year by quietly warning that its EV party is losing charge—flagging weaker Q4 deliveries, a post-subsidy sugar crash, and a second straight annual sales decline while Wall Street was busy popping champagne.