Donald Copperfield never misses a trick—one moment blasting the Fed for not cutting fast enough, the next boasting about America’s “booming” economy. Yet the real magic act isn’t in the Central Banker In Chief’s rates, it’s in Washington’s binge spending and dollar weaponization, which keep long-term yields sky-high.

Analysts confidently predicted another housing slump—only to be shocked when existing home sales gasp rose 2% in July. Sure, the “rebound” still leaves sales stuck at 15-year lows and frozen in place for three years.

The median home price slipped slightly from June’s record $432,700 to $422,400, marking a modest 0.2% YoY gain and the 25th consecutive month of year-over-year increases.

Affordability may be “slightly improving,” as wage growth is outpacing home price increase, and buyers have more choices. Sure. Meanwhile, only 2% of sales are foreclosures, half the country is seeing price declines… and yet the median home still costs more than a new build. Oh, and buyers are clearly thrilled: just 21% of homes sold above list, down from 28%. Market healthy? You bet—if by “healthy” you mean painfully overpriced.

Silver lining: with buyers finally saying “enough” on sky-high prices, unsold inventory climbed to its highest level since May 2020. Translation: sellers better start slashing prices—or risk sitting on their homes like expensive paperweights.

The reality: with 87% of mortgage holders locked into rates below today’s levels—and two-thirds paying 2 percentage points less—moving is about as appealing as voluntarily stepping into a pit of lava.

Bees, the fragile pillars of our food supply, pollinate a third of everything we eat—yet America’s colonies are collapsing at staggering rates.

Ravaged by the vampiric Varroa mite, now resistant to the last line of defence, beekeepers are watching hives vanish by the millions. The result is catastrophic: more than 60% of colonies lost in less than a year, billions in economic damage, and a looming threat to global food security. Without bees, ecosystems unravel, harvests collapse, and the very foundation of human survival begins to crack.

Experts are sounding the alarm: without swift action, the collapse of bee colonies could send food costs soaring, disrupt crop production, and wipe out commercial beekeeping operations altogether. In a stark warning this spring, the Honey Bee Health Coalition revealed that by January 2025, U.S. beekeepers were reporting the largest honey bee die-off ever recorded—an unprecedented crisis that threatens both agriculture and the food supply itself.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/650342507631075013d25a2c/t/67eed76409b99b1e0706b8e8/1743705957725/04_03_2025%2BUpdated%2BColony%2BLoss%2BPR.pdf

Bee losses are reaching catastrophic levels, with some keepers losing up to 80% of their hives—an almost impossible setback to recover from. The Varroa mite, a parasite likened to a plate-sized tick on a bee’s chest, spreads lethal viruses and has grown resistant to standard pesticides. Alternatives exist, but heat, timing, and limited effectiveness make them unreliable. The crisis is so severe that Texas has launched its first bee breeding center to engineer mite-fighting queens. Yet with pesticides, poor nutrition, and disease compounding the threat, the survival of bees—and the global food chain they underpin—is now in peril.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1472076/

In a nutshell, America’s bees are dying in record numbers, driven by a supercharged parasite, leaving crops, ecosystems, and the global food supply on the brink of collapse.

At his farewell hoedown in Jackson Hole, the Central Banker In Chief finally hinted at rate cuts—though not without a stern lecture about tariffs inflating prices faster than a state fair balloon. Donald Copperfield, never one for subtlety, called it “too late,” while FED officials split into three camps: the eager cutters, the cautious dabblers, and the hawks who still dream of hiking. July’s ugly jobs report gave the doves ammo, but the Central Banker In Chief kept hedging, warning that the labour market could unravel quicker than a rodeo cowboy on a bad bull.

Ultimately, equity investors should remember that rate cuts are no magic shield for stocks. Every rate-cutting cycle has marked not the prevention of a downturn, but the Fed’s reluctant admission that the economy is already breaking down. And historically, that’s been a recipe for weak—or even negative—S&P 500 returns.

In a nutshell, rate cuts aren’t salvation—they’re the Fed’s confession that the party’s over, and for stocks, that usually means the hangover is just beginning.

🤵 The Macro Butler Weekly Digest 🤵

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Anyone who’s ever had to feed themselves knows groceries have been climbing for years—except, of course, for the plutocrats advising policymakers, who wouldn’t recognize a grocery aisle if they tripped over it.
Meat prices just hit records, vegetables are spiking thanks to labor shortages and deportations, and food inflation is running 3% higher than last June.

Honolulu leads the misery index with grocery costs 20% above New York’s, because importing a loaf of bread to paradise apparently costs a small fortune. California and Washington cities also shine on the “pay-more-for-lettuce” leaderboard, with San Francisco, LA, Seattle, and ‘blue friends’ proving that high living costs extend all the way to your fridge.

You don’t need a PhD in politics to notice the pattern: the priciest grocery bills pile up in cities run by reckless ‘blue Keynesians’, whose grand strategy seems less about governance and more about keeping citizens broke and dependent.

The YOLO crowd, perpetually hypnotized by Wall Street fairy tales, drools at every whisper of a Fed rate cut, convinced it’s manna for stocks and the economy. Meanwhile, anyone with a functioning chart—and more than half the brain of your average TikTok trader—knows the truth: a Fed cut usually signals a faltering U.S. economy, and historically, the S&P 500 tends to sulk over the next 12 months rather than dance.

Anyone with even a shred of economic sense—and not sipping the bankers’ Kool-Aid—knows this: when the Fed cuts rates, it’s a red flag that the economy is in trouble, S&P 500 earnings have already peaked, and they’ll only rebound once the Fed starts talking about raising rates again as the business cycle pivots back toward a boom.

Seasoned investors know the drill: a Fed rate cut signals that the Nasdaq has already peaked relative to the Dow, and it’s time to flee the YOLO-favorite tech darlings and seek refuge in the stodgy, reliable Dow stalwarts.