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EndGame Macro
Palmer Luckey’s argument is that the hollowing out of American manufacturing wasn’t an accident or an inevitable byproduct of globalization. He’s saying it was a deliberate choice by people at the top, a strategy that prioritized profits, financial engineering, and short term gains, even though it meant gutting local industries, destabilizing entire communities, and undercutting the economic foundation of the middle class.
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Palmer Luckey’s argument is that the hollowing out of American manufacturing wasn’t an accident or an inevitable byproduct of globalization. He’s saying it was a deliberate choice by people at the top, a strategy that prioritized profits, financial engineering, and short term gains, even though it meant gutting local industries, destabilizing entire communities, and undercutting the economic foundation of the middle class.
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EndGame Macro
This looks like risk getting pulled. Bitcoin trades around the clock, so when people start cutting exposure or leaning away from leverage, it often shows up here first. Historically, BTC has been less a signal about the real economy and more a signal about risk appetite and liquidity. When money is easy, it flies; when conditions tighten, it’s one of the first things sold. It’s also worth remembering that Bitcoin has never lived through a long, credit driven recession and the closest test was 2020, which quickly turned into a liquidity flood. So in the early stages of stress, it tends to behave like a high beta risk asset, not a shelter. That’s why moves like this are often the market quietly saying it wants less risk on the books, not more.
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This looks like risk getting pulled. Bitcoin trades around the clock, so when people start cutting exposure or leaning away from leverage, it often shows up here first. Historically, BTC has been less a signal about the real economy and more a signal about risk appetite and liquidity. When money is easy, it flies; when conditions tighten, it’s one of the first things sold. It’s also worth remembering that Bitcoin has never lived through a long, credit driven recession and the closest test was 2020, which quickly turned into a liquidity flood. So in the early stages of stress, it tends to behave like a high beta risk asset, not a shelter. That’s why moves like this are often the market quietly saying it wants less risk on the books, not more.
Bitcoin $BTC getting dumped again 📉 https://t.co/1uS7uDblQu tweet
EndGame Macro
What just happened to iRobot is the end of a long unwind. The company built the category, but the moat faded, competition got brutal, and margins shrank right as borrowing costs jumped. When the Amazon deal collapsed, the last easy exit disappeared, and the balance sheet became the story. Chapter 11 doesn’t mean the business vanishes; it means control shifts to the creditors and suppliers who kept it alive, while shareholders get wiped. It’s a very late cycle lesson…in a tight money environment, even well!known brands with real products don’t survive if the capital structure stops working.
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What just happened to iRobot is the end of a long unwind. The company built the category, but the moat faded, competition got brutal, and margins shrank right as borrowing costs jumped. When the Amazon deal collapsed, the last easy exit disappeared, and the balance sheet became the story. Chapter 11 doesn’t mean the business vanishes; it means control shifts to the creditors and suppliers who kept it alive, while shareholders get wiped. It’s a very late cycle lesson…in a tight money environment, even well!known brands with real products don’t survive if the capital structure stops working.
iRobot files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after reaching a restructuring support agreement
#MacroEdge tweet
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MacroEdge (@MacroEdgeRes) on X
iRobot files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after reaching a restructuring support agreement
#MacroEdge
#MacroEdge
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EndGame Macro
This is a clean one year view shared by @levenson_david using a simple parallel trend channel. The orange lines just map the lane the market’s been traveling in with support below, resistance above, and a midpoint where price tends to pause. Nothing fancy, just structure that helps separate trend from noise.
How policy actually lines up with the move
The top in December 2024 into January 2025 wasn’t a technical accident. It lined up with a real shift in expectations on both sides. On the U.S. side, the Fed had already begun easing in late 2024, and markets started pricing a slower growth path and a lower future Fed trajectory, narrowing the dollar’s yield advantage at the margin. On the Japanese side, the BOJ finally delivered something concrete…exiting negative rates in 2024 and following up with a meaningful hike in January 2025. That made normalization feel credible rather than theoretical.
That combination hit the carry trade. When rate differentials stop widening and expectations flip, yen funded carry doesn’t adjust gently it unwinds quickly. That’s why USD/JPY fell hard into April, bottoming in the low 140s.
One important nuance is that this wasn’t about the Fed suddenly turning easy in real terms. Quantitative tightening didn’t end in the spring. The Fed kept balance sheet runoff going until it formally ended QT on December 1st shifting to full reinvestment. Through the spring and summer, real rates stayed restrictive, which matters for understanding why the dollar eventually stabilized and regained footing.
Why the grind higher made sense
By March through May, U.S. inflation proved sticky enough that the Fed adopted a more patient stance. Cuts became gradual and conditional, not aggressive. QT was still in place, and financial conditions never truly loosened. Meanwhile, the BOJ paused after January and stayed cautious for most of the year, signaling it wasn’t about to push rates materially higher in a straight line.
That stabilized the expected rate gap. Once the panic unwind was done and expectations stopped compressing, carry didn’t rush back in, it rebuilt slowly. That’s exactly what the chart shows with higher lows, steady dip buying, no vertical spikes. From the April lows into summer and then into the fall, the move was methodical, not emotional.
Where we are now
Around 155–156, price is still inside the rising channel but closer to resistance than support. That usually reads as trend intact, but no longer cheap. As long as the channel holds, the underlying carry logic hasn’t broken. The real shift won’t come from a single headline or one policy meeting, it’ll show up as a sustained break of that structure, paired with a genuine repricing of U.S. rates lower and a belief that Japan is willing to keep tightening. Until then, this remains a market trading expectations, not a confirmed regime change.
tweet
This is a clean one year view shared by @levenson_david using a simple parallel trend channel. The orange lines just map the lane the market’s been traveling in with support below, resistance above, and a midpoint where price tends to pause. Nothing fancy, just structure that helps separate trend from noise.
How policy actually lines up with the move
The top in December 2024 into January 2025 wasn’t a technical accident. It lined up with a real shift in expectations on both sides. On the U.S. side, the Fed had already begun easing in late 2024, and markets started pricing a slower growth path and a lower future Fed trajectory, narrowing the dollar’s yield advantage at the margin. On the Japanese side, the BOJ finally delivered something concrete…exiting negative rates in 2024 and following up with a meaningful hike in January 2025. That made normalization feel credible rather than theoretical.
That combination hit the carry trade. When rate differentials stop widening and expectations flip, yen funded carry doesn’t adjust gently it unwinds quickly. That’s why USD/JPY fell hard into April, bottoming in the low 140s.
One important nuance is that this wasn’t about the Fed suddenly turning easy in real terms. Quantitative tightening didn’t end in the spring. The Fed kept balance sheet runoff going until it formally ended QT on December 1st shifting to full reinvestment. Through the spring and summer, real rates stayed restrictive, which matters for understanding why the dollar eventually stabilized and regained footing.
Why the grind higher made sense
By March through May, U.S. inflation proved sticky enough that the Fed adopted a more patient stance. Cuts became gradual and conditional, not aggressive. QT was still in place, and financial conditions never truly loosened. Meanwhile, the BOJ paused after January and stayed cautious for most of the year, signaling it wasn’t about to push rates materially higher in a straight line.
That stabilized the expected rate gap. Once the panic unwind was done and expectations stopped compressing, carry didn’t rush back in, it rebuilt slowly. That’s exactly what the chart shows with higher lows, steady dip buying, no vertical spikes. From the April lows into summer and then into the fall, the move was methodical, not emotional.
Where we are now
Around 155–156, price is still inside the rising channel but closer to resistance than support. That usually reads as trend intact, but no longer cheap. As long as the channel holds, the underlying carry logic hasn’t broken. The real shift won’t come from a single headline or one policy meeting, it’ll show up as a sustained break of that structure, paired with a genuine repricing of U.S. rates lower and a belief that Japan is willing to keep tightening. Until then, this remains a market trading expectations, not a confirmed regime change.
Go yen go https://t.co/XCm2V15Cs1 tweet
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When you used the money to buy the dip instead of taking your girlfriend to vacation https://t.co/DTtRPJUNke
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When you used the money to buy the dip instead of taking your girlfriend to vacation https://t.co/DTtRPJUNke
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EndGame Macro
Rebuilding Deterrence In An Aging Europe And Germany’s Quiet Pivot
Germany is closing a vulnerability it can’t afford to leave open anymore. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shattered the idea that Europe could rely forever on deterrence by reputation and automatic U.S. backstopping. Since then, Berlin has treated defense as a real constraint again. Enlistment incentives are rising, a €100 billion special fund jump started procurement, spending is being pushed higher even against Germany’s traditional fiscal limits, and the target is real readiness before the end of the decade. Rheinmetall expanding 13 arms factories across Europe is an admission that industrial capacity, not intent, is now the bottleneck.
Alongside that is a quieter but telling shift in manpower policy. Germany isn’t introducing a full draft, but it is moving toward a conscription lite system with mandatory assessments and medical screenings for 18 year old men, voluntary service first, and a draft only as a last resort fallback. That’s less about forcing people into uniform today and more about rebuilding visibility into who could serve tomorrow, something Germany lost when conscription ended in 2011.
The deeper constraint
All of this sits on top of a demographic squeeze that doesn’t make headlines but shapes everything. Germany’s workforce is shrinking and aging, slowing growth and locking more public money into pensions and healthcare. That doesn’t cause war, but it tightens the balance sheet and shortens the runway for long, open ended strategies. You can see the adaptation in what Germany is prioritizing including ammunition, automation, drones, ISR, air defense…systems that substitute capital, technology, and scale for scarce manpower.
Why this matters now
Aging societies don’t want wars of attrition. They’re casualty averse and politically cautious. But that same pressure can compress decision timelines. When leaders believe their industrial base, demographics, or alliance guarantees may look weaker later, the incentive shifts toward rebuilding deterrence quickly and signaling resolve early. That’s the tension here. Germany’s rearmament doesn’t scream expansion. It whispers urgency, deter while the window is still open, because rebuilding factories is hard, and rebuilding readiness after they’re needed is harder.
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Rebuilding Deterrence In An Aging Europe And Germany’s Quiet Pivot
Germany is closing a vulnerability it can’t afford to leave open anymore. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shattered the idea that Europe could rely forever on deterrence by reputation and automatic U.S. backstopping. Since then, Berlin has treated defense as a real constraint again. Enlistment incentives are rising, a €100 billion special fund jump started procurement, spending is being pushed higher even against Germany’s traditional fiscal limits, and the target is real readiness before the end of the decade. Rheinmetall expanding 13 arms factories across Europe is an admission that industrial capacity, not intent, is now the bottleneck.
Alongside that is a quieter but telling shift in manpower policy. Germany isn’t introducing a full draft, but it is moving toward a conscription lite system with mandatory assessments and medical screenings for 18 year old men, voluntary service first, and a draft only as a last resort fallback. That’s less about forcing people into uniform today and more about rebuilding visibility into who could serve tomorrow, something Germany lost when conscription ended in 2011.
The deeper constraint
All of this sits on top of a demographic squeeze that doesn’t make headlines but shapes everything. Germany’s workforce is shrinking and aging, slowing growth and locking more public money into pensions and healthcare. That doesn’t cause war, but it tightens the balance sheet and shortens the runway for long, open ended strategies. You can see the adaptation in what Germany is prioritizing including ammunition, automation, drones, ISR, air defense…systems that substitute capital, technology, and scale for scarce manpower.
Why this matters now
Aging societies don’t want wars of attrition. They’re casualty averse and politically cautious. But that same pressure can compress decision timelines. When leaders believe their industrial base, demographics, or alliance guarantees may look weaker later, the incentive shifts toward rebuilding deterrence quickly and signaling resolve early. That’s the tension here. Germany’s rearmament doesn’t scream expansion. It whispers urgency, deter while the window is still open, because rebuilding factories is hard, and rebuilding readiness after they’re needed is harder.
Germany is now rebuilding its military, and Rheinmetall is building and expanding 13 arms factories across Europe. https://t.co/SL7T9BrDzA https://t.co/xc8XSM2cOg tweet