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EndGame Macro
A Freeze, A Slowdown, and A Break: Housing Is About to Show Its Real Price
This chart is showing just how strange the housing market has become. It tracks the price of new single family homes divided by the price of existing ones. Normally that ratio is comfortably above zero because new homes carry an obvious premium…they’re larger, newer, and come with warranties and builder incentives. For more than 50 years, new homes typically sold 10–20% higher, sometimes even 30–35% above existing homes.
But look at the right side…the line collapses to zero and even dips slightly negative. That means new homes are now roughly the same price or a bit cheaper than existing ones. We haven’t seen that dynamic since the early 1970s.
The reasons aren’t mysterious. Rate lock has frozen existing supply and millions of owners with 2–3% mortgages refuse to list unless they’re forced to. That keeps existing inventory tight and artificially supports prices. Builders, meanwhile, have no such luxury they need cash flow. So they’re cutting prices, shrinking square footage, buying down mortgage rates, and throwing in incentives. They’re adjusting to reality in a way homeowners can’t. And because so few existing homes are listed, the ones that do hit the market tend to skew higher end, which pushes up the average existing home price.
So this convergence doesn’t mean housing is cheap, it means new construction has repriced, while existing home prices are held aloft by low rate inertia and thin supply.
The Labor Market Is the Real Trigger
What comes next depends on jobs. A lot of stretched buyers are still hanging on, but unemployment is the swing factor. Psychology always turns before the data. People don’t need to lose their job to get nervous…hearing about layoffs, pausing raises, and hiring freezes is enough to pull them back. Even if mortgage rates fall, the willingness to take on a 30 year debt load evaporates when job security feels fragile.
And as unemployment rises, forced sellers start to appear. Suddenly the market gets a wave of people who have to sell…relocations, divorces, investors needing liquidity, borrowers who can’t carry the payment. That’s what breaks the no inventory illusion. Frozen supply begins to thaw under stress, and that’s when existing home prices finally face real downward pressure. Rate lock matters until negative cash flow matters more.
All of this unfolds while monetary policy lags. There’s a popular idea that once the Fed cuts rates or restarts QE, housing demand will explode. But that’s not how cycles work. Looser policy hits financial markets immediately, but the real economy absorbs it slowly and usually over 18–24 months. Historically, the Fed cuts into weakness, not after it resolves. So you often end up with a strange period where mortgage rates fall, but buyers don’t reappear because job security and confidence are deteriorating faster than policy can help.
That’s the backdrop this chart is hinting at. New homes have already bent to reality. Existing homes haven’t repriced, they’ve just stopped trading. As unemployment rises and psychology turns, that foundation gets tested.
The last time this ratio hovered near zero was the 1970s a decade defined by economic stress and a long, grinding adjustment in real home values. You don’t need that entire decade repeated for the rhyme to hold. A slower economy, rising layoffs, and nervous buyers are enough.
If that’s where we’re headed, the danger isn’t that prices stay too high forever. It’s that once income confidence cracks, prices move the only way they can…down in real terms first, and if the labor damage is deep enough, down in nominal terms too, even with lower mortgage rates.
See the last times throughout history the prices have converged.
DISCUSS!
“For the first time in more than 50 years, the price of a new single-family home is lower than the average price of an existing single-family home, see chart below.”
cc @m3_melody
@apolloglobal [...]
A Freeze, A Slowdown, and A Break: Housing Is About to Show Its Real Price
This chart is showing just how strange the housing market has become. It tracks the price of new single family homes divided by the price of existing ones. Normally that ratio is comfortably above zero because new homes carry an obvious premium…they’re larger, newer, and come with warranties and builder incentives. For more than 50 years, new homes typically sold 10–20% higher, sometimes even 30–35% above existing homes.
But look at the right side…the line collapses to zero and even dips slightly negative. That means new homes are now roughly the same price or a bit cheaper than existing ones. We haven’t seen that dynamic since the early 1970s.
The reasons aren’t mysterious. Rate lock has frozen existing supply and millions of owners with 2–3% mortgages refuse to list unless they’re forced to. That keeps existing inventory tight and artificially supports prices. Builders, meanwhile, have no such luxury they need cash flow. So they’re cutting prices, shrinking square footage, buying down mortgage rates, and throwing in incentives. They’re adjusting to reality in a way homeowners can’t. And because so few existing homes are listed, the ones that do hit the market tend to skew higher end, which pushes up the average existing home price.
So this convergence doesn’t mean housing is cheap, it means new construction has repriced, while existing home prices are held aloft by low rate inertia and thin supply.
The Labor Market Is the Real Trigger
What comes next depends on jobs. A lot of stretched buyers are still hanging on, but unemployment is the swing factor. Psychology always turns before the data. People don’t need to lose their job to get nervous…hearing about layoffs, pausing raises, and hiring freezes is enough to pull them back. Even if mortgage rates fall, the willingness to take on a 30 year debt load evaporates when job security feels fragile.
And as unemployment rises, forced sellers start to appear. Suddenly the market gets a wave of people who have to sell…relocations, divorces, investors needing liquidity, borrowers who can’t carry the payment. That’s what breaks the no inventory illusion. Frozen supply begins to thaw under stress, and that’s when existing home prices finally face real downward pressure. Rate lock matters until negative cash flow matters more.
All of this unfolds while monetary policy lags. There’s a popular idea that once the Fed cuts rates or restarts QE, housing demand will explode. But that’s not how cycles work. Looser policy hits financial markets immediately, but the real economy absorbs it slowly and usually over 18–24 months. Historically, the Fed cuts into weakness, not after it resolves. So you often end up with a strange period where mortgage rates fall, but buyers don’t reappear because job security and confidence are deteriorating faster than policy can help.
That’s the backdrop this chart is hinting at. New homes have already bent to reality. Existing homes haven’t repriced, they’ve just stopped trading. As unemployment rises and psychology turns, that foundation gets tested.
The last time this ratio hovered near zero was the 1970s a decade defined by economic stress and a long, grinding adjustment in real home values. You don’t need that entire decade repeated for the rhyme to hold. A slower economy, rising layoffs, and nervous buyers are enough.
If that’s where we’re headed, the danger isn’t that prices stay too high forever. It’s that once income confidence cracks, prices move the only way they can…down in real terms first, and if the labor damage is deep enough, down in nominal terms too, even with lower mortgage rates.
See the last times throughout history the prices have converged.
DISCUSS!
“For the first time in more than 50 years, the price of a new single-family home is lower than the average price of an existing single-family home, see chart below.”
cc @m3_melody
@apolloglobal [...]
Offshore
EndGame Macro A Freeze, A Slowdown, and A Break: Housing Is About to Show Its Real Price This chart is showing just how strange the housing market has become. It tracks the price of new single family homes divided by the price of existing ones. Normally that…
https://t.co/tJt6ymZZQT - Danielle DiMartino Booth tweet
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Fiscal.ai
How much would Amazon Web Services be worth on its own?
Revenue: $122B, +20% YoY
Operating Income: $44B
$AMZN https://t.co/v3FC1OQRIz
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How much would Amazon Web Services be worth on its own?
Revenue: $122B, +20% YoY
Operating Income: $44B
$AMZN https://t.co/v3FC1OQRIz
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EndGame Macro
When Oil Gets Historically Cheap, Pain Usually Follows Then a Spike.
This is about the price of oil relative to the amount of money in the system. It takes the nominal price of crude and divides it by U.S. M2 money supply. In plain language…“How expensive is oil once you account for how many dollars we’ve printed?”
When you look at it that way, you get a very different picture. In nominal terms, oil doesn’t look cheap. But adjusted for money supply, it’s sitting right back near the historically cheap zone, the same kind of levels we saw after major downturns or periods of severe underinvestment. You don’t need to obsess about the exact formula to get the point…oil hasn’t kept up with the massive monetary expansion of the last decade. In real terms, it’s lagging everything else.
That’s why Tavi is saying what he’s saying. Relative to the ocean of dollars we’ve created, oil is one of the few things that hasn’t inflated.
What Happens When Prices Sit Below Profitability
Here’s the part people underestimate, the oil industry can handle volatility, but it can’t handle long periods below the break even range. And for most U.S. producers, the sustainable zone is roughly $55–$70 a barrel, depending on the basin and the balance sheet.
When prices hang out below that level for too long, the entire ecosystem starts to contract…
•Drilling slows because new wells no longer make sense.
•Shale decline curves quietly pull existing production lower.
•Smaller, heavily indebted operators start to struggle.
•Service companies…the rigs, the frack crews, the logistics lay off workers or mothball equipment.
Oil supply doesn’t collapse overnight, it just erodes day by day while nobody’s paying attention.
That’s what makes the lag so dangerous. It takes months to slow investment… and months to years to turn it back on. Even in fast cycle U.S. shale, getting rigs, crews, sand, infrastructure, and financing lined up takes real time. Six months at the absolute best and often closer to a year. For offshore or conventional fields, it can be several years before new supply shows up.
So when the world finally realizes that demand is picking back up or when a geopolitical shock hits, the system simply can’t respond fast enough. And that’s when prices don’t just rise… they spike.
We’ve seen this before in the late ’90s, post 2008, again after the 2014–2016 shale bust. Low prices encourage underinvestment. Underinvestment shrinks spare capacity. Then any modest rebound in demand creates a squeeze. And because supply can’t respond in real time, price does all the adjusting.
Right now we have all the ingredients for that setup with oil cheap in real terms, investment constrained, political pressure against drilling, and a global system that has much less cushion than it did ten years ago.
Oil doesn’t stay this cheap in real terms, without something giving. And historically, what gives is supply… followed by prices ripping higher when the lag finally catches up.
tweet
When Oil Gets Historically Cheap, Pain Usually Follows Then a Spike.
This is about the price of oil relative to the amount of money in the system. It takes the nominal price of crude and divides it by U.S. M2 money supply. In plain language…“How expensive is oil once you account for how many dollars we’ve printed?”
When you look at it that way, you get a very different picture. In nominal terms, oil doesn’t look cheap. But adjusted for money supply, it’s sitting right back near the historically cheap zone, the same kind of levels we saw after major downturns or periods of severe underinvestment. You don’t need to obsess about the exact formula to get the point…oil hasn’t kept up with the massive monetary expansion of the last decade. In real terms, it’s lagging everything else.
That’s why Tavi is saying what he’s saying. Relative to the ocean of dollars we’ve created, oil is one of the few things that hasn’t inflated.
What Happens When Prices Sit Below Profitability
Here’s the part people underestimate, the oil industry can handle volatility, but it can’t handle long periods below the break even range. And for most U.S. producers, the sustainable zone is roughly $55–$70 a barrel, depending on the basin and the balance sheet.
When prices hang out below that level for too long, the entire ecosystem starts to contract…
•Drilling slows because new wells no longer make sense.
•Shale decline curves quietly pull existing production lower.
•Smaller, heavily indebted operators start to struggle.
•Service companies…the rigs, the frack crews, the logistics lay off workers or mothball equipment.
Oil supply doesn’t collapse overnight, it just erodes day by day while nobody’s paying attention.
That’s what makes the lag so dangerous. It takes months to slow investment… and months to years to turn it back on. Even in fast cycle U.S. shale, getting rigs, crews, sand, infrastructure, and financing lined up takes real time. Six months at the absolute best and often closer to a year. For offshore or conventional fields, it can be several years before new supply shows up.
So when the world finally realizes that demand is picking back up or when a geopolitical shock hits, the system simply can’t respond fast enough. And that’s when prices don’t just rise… they spike.
We’ve seen this before in the late ’90s, post 2008, again after the 2014–2016 shale bust. Low prices encourage underinvestment. Underinvestment shrinks spare capacity. Then any modest rebound in demand creates a squeeze. And because supply can’t respond in real time, price does all the adjusting.
Right now we have all the ingredients for that setup with oil cheap in real terms, investment constrained, political pressure against drilling, and a global system that has much less cushion than it did ten years ago.
Oil doesn’t stay this cheap in real terms, without something giving. And historically, what gives is supply… followed by prices ripping higher when the lag finally catches up.
Oil is currently near its cheapest levels in history when measured against money supply.
Each time we reach this point, investors come up with reasons why “this time is different” and why prices might stay depressed — but historically, that narrative has never held up.
Oil is likely one of the most undervalued commodities in the world today, in my view. tweet
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EndGame Macro
When the Biggest Meatpacker Starts Cutting Capacity, You Know the Cycle Has Turned
What Tyson is doing here isn’t a one off business decision, it’s a signal that the entire cattle and beef cycle has entered a painful stage. Tyson’s Lexington, Nebraska plant handles about 5% of total U.S. slaughter capacity, yet it’s being shut down because cattle supplies have fallen to their lowest level in nearly 75 years.
When supplies get this tight, packers like Tyson are forced to outbid each other for every animal. Ranchers finally have leverage; processors are the ones getting squeezed. Tyson’s beef division has already posted over $700M in losses across the last two fiscal years, and they’re projecting another $400M–$600M loss for 2026.
A plant that big can’t run profitably in that environment, especially when the drought driven herd liquidation that caused this shortage will take years to reverse. Closing Lexington early is Tyson basically admitting that Cattle won’t be plentiful anytime soon, so they need to shrink now rather than bleed slowly.
When Cycles Get Tight, Everything Downstream Breaks
Beef processing is brutally cyclical. During COVID, packers made record profits because labor shortages limited output and meat prices exploded. But those margins hid the structural damage happening upstream: drought destroyed pasture, feed costs soared, and ranchers culled their herds.
Now we’re living with the consequences. Cattle supply is scarce. Feedlot operators have fewer animals. Packers are fighting over limited inventory. And a plant that once ran 5,000 head per day is now running below capacity. Once that happens, the economics flip, a giant facility becomes a liability.
The local impact is enormous. Lexington is a town of about 10,000 people; losing a 3,200 worker anchor employer will hit everything from feedyards to grocery stores. Tyson knows this, which is why their statements emphasized the impact on team members and communities. But the math is what it is.
Policy Made a Tight Cycle Even Tighter
Layer policy over this and the situation gets even messier.
Tariffs on Canadian and Mexican beef raised costs for U.S. processors. Retaliatory tariffs from countries like Vietnam and Thailand cut into export markets. Meanwhile, the White House accused packers of manipulating beef prices and pushed to increase imports to bring consumer prices down, all while packers were already paying record high cattle costs.
It’s a contradiction…the government wants cheaper beef for consumers, but it has simultaneously made processors’ cost structure worse, reduced their export options, and created more volatility in supply chains.
Tyson isn’t closing plants because demand is weak. They’re closing because margin pressure, policy pressure, and supply pressure are hitting all at once.
This Is What a Commodity Crunch Looks Like
This is the classic cattle cycle playing out in real time. Years of drought and underinvestment shrink supply, the shortage forces packers to pay up, losses mount, and eventually capacity gets shuttered. And because cattle take years to grow, you can’t fix it quickly. The pain always shows up downstream first…at the processors, then in rural communities, and eventually in consumer prices.
If anything, shutting a plant this large before 2026 tells you Tyson expects the worst of the shortage hasn’t even hit yet. The herd will rebuild, but slowly. The market will rebalance, but not tomorrow. And when supply finally returns, it will do so unevenly with fewer plants left standing to process it.
This is the U.S. beef supply chain signaling that a multi year scarcity cycle is underway and the consequences will ripple through the entire system.
Exclusive: Tyson Foods, America’s largest meat supplier, is planning to close one of its largest beef-processing plants in Nebraska at a time when a cattle shortage in the U.S. squeezes meatpacking companies https://t.co/QcaowlaCGz - The Wall Street Journal tweet
When the Biggest Meatpacker Starts Cutting Capacity, You Know the Cycle Has Turned
What Tyson is doing here isn’t a one off business decision, it’s a signal that the entire cattle and beef cycle has entered a painful stage. Tyson’s Lexington, Nebraska plant handles about 5% of total U.S. slaughter capacity, yet it’s being shut down because cattle supplies have fallen to their lowest level in nearly 75 years.
When supplies get this tight, packers like Tyson are forced to outbid each other for every animal. Ranchers finally have leverage; processors are the ones getting squeezed. Tyson’s beef division has already posted over $700M in losses across the last two fiscal years, and they’re projecting another $400M–$600M loss for 2026.
A plant that big can’t run profitably in that environment, especially when the drought driven herd liquidation that caused this shortage will take years to reverse. Closing Lexington early is Tyson basically admitting that Cattle won’t be plentiful anytime soon, so they need to shrink now rather than bleed slowly.
When Cycles Get Tight, Everything Downstream Breaks
Beef processing is brutally cyclical. During COVID, packers made record profits because labor shortages limited output and meat prices exploded. But those margins hid the structural damage happening upstream: drought destroyed pasture, feed costs soared, and ranchers culled their herds.
Now we’re living with the consequences. Cattle supply is scarce. Feedlot operators have fewer animals. Packers are fighting over limited inventory. And a plant that once ran 5,000 head per day is now running below capacity. Once that happens, the economics flip, a giant facility becomes a liability.
The local impact is enormous. Lexington is a town of about 10,000 people; losing a 3,200 worker anchor employer will hit everything from feedyards to grocery stores. Tyson knows this, which is why their statements emphasized the impact on team members and communities. But the math is what it is.
Policy Made a Tight Cycle Even Tighter
Layer policy over this and the situation gets even messier.
Tariffs on Canadian and Mexican beef raised costs for U.S. processors. Retaliatory tariffs from countries like Vietnam and Thailand cut into export markets. Meanwhile, the White House accused packers of manipulating beef prices and pushed to increase imports to bring consumer prices down, all while packers were already paying record high cattle costs.
It’s a contradiction…the government wants cheaper beef for consumers, but it has simultaneously made processors’ cost structure worse, reduced their export options, and created more volatility in supply chains.
Tyson isn’t closing plants because demand is weak. They’re closing because margin pressure, policy pressure, and supply pressure are hitting all at once.
This Is What a Commodity Crunch Looks Like
This is the classic cattle cycle playing out in real time. Years of drought and underinvestment shrink supply, the shortage forces packers to pay up, losses mount, and eventually capacity gets shuttered. And because cattle take years to grow, you can’t fix it quickly. The pain always shows up downstream first…at the processors, then in rural communities, and eventually in consumer prices.
If anything, shutting a plant this large before 2026 tells you Tyson expects the worst of the shortage hasn’t even hit yet. The herd will rebuild, but slowly. The market will rebalance, but not tomorrow. And when supply finally returns, it will do so unevenly with fewer plants left standing to process it.
This is the U.S. beef supply chain signaling that a multi year scarcity cycle is underway and the consequences will ripple through the entire system.
Exclusive: Tyson Foods, America’s largest meat supplier, is planning to close one of its largest beef-processing plants in Nebraska at a time when a cattle shortage in the U.S. squeezes meatpacking companies https://t.co/QcaowlaCGz - The Wall Street Journal tweet
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🗓️ Short week ahead!
What are you watching?
• Monday: $ZM
• Tuesday: $BABA $ZS $WDAY $ADSK $ADI $DELL $NTNX $NIO
All visualized in our newsletter. https://t.co/x6tI84yryd
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🗓️ Short week ahead!
What are you watching?
• Monday: $ZM
• Tuesday: $BABA $ZS $WDAY $ADSK $ADI $DELL $NTNX $NIO
All visualized in our newsletter. https://t.co/x6tI84yryd
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Fiscal.ai
If you invested $10,000 in Disney 10 years ago, you would now have...
$9,870
$DIS https://t.co/K49ko8Fya3
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If you invested $10,000 in Disney 10 years ago, you would now have...
$9,870
$DIS https://t.co/K49ko8Fya3
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EndGame Macro
Mark Cuban’s Been Right: PBMs Are Gutting Local Pharmacies in Real Time
According to the article, Walgreens is buying the pharmacy business of Fruth, a 73 year old regional chain in WV/KY/OH, and Fruth will shut all of its retail stores by the end of 2025. The owner is blunt about why…she says PBMs are reimbursing pharmacies less than the actual cost of the medication, and that this “has caused the closure of thousands of pharmacies across America.”
So Walgreens isn’t swooping in because the model is thriving. It’s buying the scripts off a distressed regional player who can’t survive in a world where three giant PBMs set reimbursement rates in opaque contracts and claw money back later with fees. Independents and small chains don’t have the scale or negotiating leverage, so one by one they get rolled up or disappear. You end up with fewer local pharmacies, less competition, and more market power concentrated in a handful of national chains and benefit managers. That’s good for the middlemen; it’s usually bad for prices, access, and community health.
This is exactly the problem Mark Cuban (@mcuban) has been talking about. His whole Cost Plus Drugs model is built around cutting PBMs out of the loop by buying directly from manufacturers, publish the actual acquisition cost, add a fixed markup and a small pharmacy fee, and ship it to patients without the hidden rebates, spread pricing, or retroactive DIR games. He’s basically saying: if PBMs are the ones squeezing margins so hard that 70 year old family chains like Fruth can’t survive, the answer isn’t another round of consolidation, it’s changing how the money flows in the first place.
So when you see a tweet like this, it’s not just a random M&A headline. It’s another data point in the story Cuban’s been trying to tell…the current PBM driven pharmacy ecosystem is structurally hostile to small players, accelerates consolidation, and ultimately leaves patients and towns with fewer choices and higher fragility.
tweet
Mark Cuban’s Been Right: PBMs Are Gutting Local Pharmacies in Real Time
According to the article, Walgreens is buying the pharmacy business of Fruth, a 73 year old regional chain in WV/KY/OH, and Fruth will shut all of its retail stores by the end of 2025. The owner is blunt about why…she says PBMs are reimbursing pharmacies less than the actual cost of the medication, and that this “has caused the closure of thousands of pharmacies across America.”
So Walgreens isn’t swooping in because the model is thriving. It’s buying the scripts off a distressed regional player who can’t survive in a world where three giant PBMs set reimbursement rates in opaque contracts and claw money back later with fees. Independents and small chains don’t have the scale or negotiating leverage, so one by one they get rolled up or disappear. You end up with fewer local pharmacies, less competition, and more market power concentrated in a handful of national chains and benefit managers. That’s good for the middlemen; it’s usually bad for prices, access, and community health.
This is exactly the problem Mark Cuban (@mcuban) has been talking about. His whole Cost Plus Drugs model is built around cutting PBMs out of the loop by buying directly from manufacturers, publish the actual acquisition cost, add a fixed markup and a small pharmacy fee, and ship it to patients without the hidden rebates, spread pricing, or retroactive DIR games. He’s basically saying: if PBMs are the ones squeezing margins so hard that 70 year old family chains like Fruth can’t survive, the answer isn’t another round of consolidation, it’s changing how the money flows in the first place.
So when you see a tweet like this, it’s not just a random M&A headline. It’s another data point in the story Cuban’s been trying to tell…the current PBM driven pharmacy ecosystem is structurally hostile to small players, accelerates consolidation, and ultimately leaves patients and towns with fewer choices and higher fragility.
https://t.co/9ZUqEkolV9 tweet
EndGame Macro
The old model really is breaking down. Decades of leverage, financial engineering, and artificially low rates have left the monetary architecture brittle. Correlations don’t behave, the Fed’s usual tools don’t map cleanly to outcomes, and new rails like stablecoins, tokenized Treasuries, Bitcoin are no longer experiments. They’re beginning to shape real flows. Stablecoins now export dollar rails without SWIFT. Bitcoin serves as a macro signal and collateral rather than a curiosity. And JPMorgan still sits in the middle of the legacy structure, running settlement, derivatives, custody, and clearing in a way that makes them indispensable.
So yes, there is a genuine struggle over who ends up controlling the next version of the dollar system. But the idea that this is as simple as the Treasury and Bitcoin vs. JPM and the Fed showdown misses the messy, factional reality of U.S. monetary power. The Fed Board, regional Feds, Treasury, Congress, regulators, courts, big banks, ETF issuers none of them move in unison. They contradict each other, negotiate, leak, and adapt. The fact that Scott Bessent and Jerome Powell are literally having breakfast almost every week, calmly talking through risks etc…is the giveaway. This isn’t institutional civil war; it’s coordinated tension inside the same regime.
The biggest thing that needs to be highlighted is fiscal dominance, the gravitational force created by deficits and debt. When the fiscal position deteriorates enough, the Treasury’s needs begin to dictate monetary policy almost automatically. The Fed’s independence erodes not because of a coordinated plot, but because the math leaves it with fewer choices. You can’t fight inflation and keep the government funded forever. Eventually the priority shifts toward stabilizing the bond market and accommodating issuance. In that world, Treasury gaining influence over issuance, settlement, and digital rails isn’t a coup, it’s the logical endgame of the debt super cycle.
JPM also isn’t the panicked dinosaur the narrative suggests. They’re already building tokenized dollar platforms, banking crypto firms, touching Bitcoin ETFs, and positioning themselves as a liquidity and custody layer for any future stablecoin system. If Treasury leans into a stablecoin heavy architecture, they’ll still need regulated credit, custody, and settlement. JPM will happily provide some of that. Their goal isn’t to stop the new rails, it’s to sit in the middle of them.
Bitcoin isn’t a clean insurgent either. It has become a pressure valve for the existing system: speculative energy can blow off without feeding CPI, flows are traced through KYC’d on ramps, and custody is concentrating in a handful of regulated warehouses. You don’t need to control the protocol to shape its role. You only need to control the pipes around it.
Put it all together and the more realistic and still slightly dark interpretation looks like this…Powell’s higher for longer isn’t just late cycle inflation management; it’s a deliberate dollar scarcity squeeze on the rest of the world. Treasury, drifting into fiscal dominance, is experimenting with new rails to deepen demand for U.S. debt. The big banks are adapting so that no matter which rails win, they remain unavoidable. And Bitcoin and stablecoins aren’t the combatants, they’re the terrain everyone is trying to shape.
Something enormous is happening. But it’s not two tidy factions battling it out. It’s a messy transition where the Fed, Treasury, banks, and digital rail ecosystems are all trying to survive the same breaking wave with each maneuvering to make sure they end up closest to the spigot when the new architecture hardens.
tweet
The old model really is breaking down. Decades of leverage, financial engineering, and artificially low rates have left the monetary architecture brittle. Correlations don’t behave, the Fed’s usual tools don’t map cleanly to outcomes, and new rails like stablecoins, tokenized Treasuries, Bitcoin are no longer experiments. They’re beginning to shape real flows. Stablecoins now export dollar rails without SWIFT. Bitcoin serves as a macro signal and collateral rather than a curiosity. And JPMorgan still sits in the middle of the legacy structure, running settlement, derivatives, custody, and clearing in a way that makes them indispensable.
So yes, there is a genuine struggle over who ends up controlling the next version of the dollar system. But the idea that this is as simple as the Treasury and Bitcoin vs. JPM and the Fed showdown misses the messy, factional reality of U.S. monetary power. The Fed Board, regional Feds, Treasury, Congress, regulators, courts, big banks, ETF issuers none of them move in unison. They contradict each other, negotiate, leak, and adapt. The fact that Scott Bessent and Jerome Powell are literally having breakfast almost every week, calmly talking through risks etc…is the giveaway. This isn’t institutional civil war; it’s coordinated tension inside the same regime.
The biggest thing that needs to be highlighted is fiscal dominance, the gravitational force created by deficits and debt. When the fiscal position deteriorates enough, the Treasury’s needs begin to dictate monetary policy almost automatically. The Fed’s independence erodes not because of a coordinated plot, but because the math leaves it with fewer choices. You can’t fight inflation and keep the government funded forever. Eventually the priority shifts toward stabilizing the bond market and accommodating issuance. In that world, Treasury gaining influence over issuance, settlement, and digital rails isn’t a coup, it’s the logical endgame of the debt super cycle.
JPM also isn’t the panicked dinosaur the narrative suggests. They’re already building tokenized dollar platforms, banking crypto firms, touching Bitcoin ETFs, and positioning themselves as a liquidity and custody layer for any future stablecoin system. If Treasury leans into a stablecoin heavy architecture, they’ll still need regulated credit, custody, and settlement. JPM will happily provide some of that. Their goal isn’t to stop the new rails, it’s to sit in the middle of them.
Bitcoin isn’t a clean insurgent either. It has become a pressure valve for the existing system: speculative energy can blow off without feeding CPI, flows are traced through KYC’d on ramps, and custody is concentrating in a handful of regulated warehouses. You don’t need to control the protocol to shape its role. You only need to control the pipes around it.
Put it all together and the more realistic and still slightly dark interpretation looks like this…Powell’s higher for longer isn’t just late cycle inflation management; it’s a deliberate dollar scarcity squeeze on the rest of the world. Treasury, drifting into fiscal dominance, is experimenting with new rails to deepen demand for U.S. debt. The big banks are adapting so that no matter which rails win, they remain unavoidable. And Bitcoin and stablecoins aren’t the combatants, they’re the terrain everyone is trying to shape.
Something enormous is happening. But it’s not two tidy factions battling it out. It’s a messy transition where the Fed, Treasury, banks, and digital rail ecosystems are all trying to survive the same breaking wave with each maneuvering to make sure they end up closest to the spigot when the new architecture hardens.
https://t.co/19EgCtgKx4 tweet
X (formerly Twitter)
Maryland HODL (BitBonds = Structural Innovation) (@MarylandHODL21) on X
Trump’s Gambit: The Quiet War Between the White House and JPMorgan
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EndGame Macro
Starve the World, Then Pivot…The Harsh Strategy Underneath U.S. Monetary Policy
Ever since Trump returned to office in January, one thing has become clearer every month…global dollar scarcity has been tightening, not easing. And it hasn’t happened by accident. The policies he’s chosen like tariffs, trade friction actually created the perfect setup for the Fed to not cut rates. Instead of loosening financial conditions, the system has been pulled tighter.
From January to now, the Fed kept rates elevated, only trimming lightly in September and October. QT continuing right into December 1st, removing liquidity and collateral from the system. At the same time, Trump’s tariff heavy approach pushed import prices higher, disrupted supply chains, and added a layer of inflationary pressure right when the Fed needed a narrative to justify staying cautious. Every move that supposedly should have pushed Powell toward cuts did the opposite. It reinforced the case for higher for longer.
If Trump genuinely wanted Powell to cut aggressively, this isn’t the policy mix he’d use. Inflation was sticky. And Powell, whose mandate is still framed around stable prices, gets political cover to sit tight and delay meaningful easing.
But that’s where the deeper logic starts to show. High U.S. rates don’t just cool the American economy, they create global dollar scarcity. When dollars are expensive and liquidity is tight, the pressure hits other economies faster and harder than it hits the U.S. Emerging markets feel funding stress. Europe struggles under higher dollar denominated costs. China faces capital strain and tighter refinancing windows. Any nation running dollar debt and that’s most of the world feels the squeeze.
Today the pattern is unmistakable…the dollar is scarce, global funding is tight, and the countries Trump most wants leverage over are the ones struggling most. And because QT isn’t over until December 1st, that scarcity wasn’t just maintained, it intensified throughout his first year back in office.
If the Fed had cut rates aggressively earlier in 2025, it would have eased the pressure abroad. A weaker dollar would have reduced debt burdens, improved financial conditions, and given breathing room to BRICS economies, heavily indebted sovereigns, and energy importers. Rate cuts would have helped the rest of the world far more than they would have helped the U.S. And if your strategic goal is to box rival nations into a corner, the last thing you want is to relieve their pressure valve.
So the contradiction resolves itself…Trump publicly demands cuts while creating conditions that give Powell every excuse not to. Keeping rates high and dollars scarce hurts everyone else first. Then, when global stress peaks, the U.S. can decide who gets access to fresh dollar liquidity likely through stablecoins, tokenized Treasuries, or whatever the next dollar rails become.
That’s the real shift since January, the U.S. looks increasingly willing to tolerate domestic pain to maximize geopolitical leverage abroad. And right now dollar scarcity has become the defining feature of that strategy.
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Starve the World, Then Pivot…The Harsh Strategy Underneath U.S. Monetary Policy
Ever since Trump returned to office in January, one thing has become clearer every month…global dollar scarcity has been tightening, not easing. And it hasn’t happened by accident. The policies he’s chosen like tariffs, trade friction actually created the perfect setup for the Fed to not cut rates. Instead of loosening financial conditions, the system has been pulled tighter.
From January to now, the Fed kept rates elevated, only trimming lightly in September and October. QT continuing right into December 1st, removing liquidity and collateral from the system. At the same time, Trump’s tariff heavy approach pushed import prices higher, disrupted supply chains, and added a layer of inflationary pressure right when the Fed needed a narrative to justify staying cautious. Every move that supposedly should have pushed Powell toward cuts did the opposite. It reinforced the case for higher for longer.
If Trump genuinely wanted Powell to cut aggressively, this isn’t the policy mix he’d use. Inflation was sticky. And Powell, whose mandate is still framed around stable prices, gets political cover to sit tight and delay meaningful easing.
But that’s where the deeper logic starts to show. High U.S. rates don’t just cool the American economy, they create global dollar scarcity. When dollars are expensive and liquidity is tight, the pressure hits other economies faster and harder than it hits the U.S. Emerging markets feel funding stress. Europe struggles under higher dollar denominated costs. China faces capital strain and tighter refinancing windows. Any nation running dollar debt and that’s most of the world feels the squeeze.
Today the pattern is unmistakable…the dollar is scarce, global funding is tight, and the countries Trump most wants leverage over are the ones struggling most. And because QT isn’t over until December 1st, that scarcity wasn’t just maintained, it intensified throughout his first year back in office.
If the Fed had cut rates aggressively earlier in 2025, it would have eased the pressure abroad. A weaker dollar would have reduced debt burdens, improved financial conditions, and given breathing room to BRICS economies, heavily indebted sovereigns, and energy importers. Rate cuts would have helped the rest of the world far more than they would have helped the U.S. And if your strategic goal is to box rival nations into a corner, the last thing you want is to relieve their pressure valve.
So the contradiction resolves itself…Trump publicly demands cuts while creating conditions that give Powell every excuse not to. Keeping rates high and dollars scarce hurts everyone else first. Then, when global stress peaks, the U.S. can decide who gets access to fresh dollar liquidity likely through stablecoins, tokenized Treasuries, or whatever the next dollar rails become.
That’s the real shift since January, the U.S. looks increasingly willing to tolerate domestic pain to maximize geopolitical leverage abroad. And right now dollar scarcity has become the defining feature of that strategy.
The enemy has a name: it's the Banking system.
Take a look at the chart of JPM since the great financial crisis. It's been STRAIGHT UP for the last 15 years.
JP Morgan has been consolidating its power as the head of the Banking Crime syndicate through both Obama terms, Trump 1.0 and Biden.
The Fed works for JPM.
They HATE Bitcoin, DEFI and Stablecoins. They quietly architected Chokepoint 1.0 and 2.0. Now, they see Bitcoin as vulnerable and they are putting the screws on MSTR.
Against this, we have Trump, Bessant, and a potentially new Fed in May, completely under treasury contol.
Bitcoin as a strategic asset.
This is going to be an EPIC battle. tweet