Offshore
Video
EndGame Macro
Auto Delinquencies Are Already at Crisis Levels
What makes this moment worse than 2008 at the household level is that the affordability stress is already visible before unemployment has really broken. Auto delinquencies are now higher than they were pre GFC with overall 90 day delinquencies around 5% and subprime 60 day delinquencies near 6.65% even though joblessness is still relatively low. That tells you the problem isn’t mass layoffs yet, it’s that the cost of everyday life has outrun incomes. In 2008, households cracked after jobs disappeared and housing collapsed; this time, the stress is showing up first with unemployment still slowly inching up. What’s rising now and likely to push this closer to a 2008 style outcome is the spillover because lender failures have already begun, job quality is slipping, savings are depleted, and delinquencies are spreading beyond isolated cases. If unemployment drifts higher in 2026, this won’t need a housing crash to spread, the damage is already baked into household balance sheets.
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Auto Delinquencies Are Already at Crisis Levels
What makes this moment worse than 2008 at the household level is that the affordability stress is already visible before unemployment has really broken. Auto delinquencies are now higher than they were pre GFC with overall 90 day delinquencies around 5% and subprime 60 day delinquencies near 6.65% even though joblessness is still relatively low. That tells you the problem isn’t mass layoffs yet, it’s that the cost of everyday life has outrun incomes. In 2008, households cracked after jobs disappeared and housing collapsed; this time, the stress is showing up first with unemployment still slowly inching up. What’s rising now and likely to push this closer to a 2008 style outcome is the spillover because lender failures have already begun, job quality is slipping, savings are depleted, and delinquencies are spreading beyond isolated cases. If unemployment drifts higher in 2026, this won’t need a housing crash to spread, the damage is already baked into household balance sheets.
Auto Deliquencies Hit Record High as Consumers Caught Off Guard by Soaring Payments
#MacroEdge tweet
EndGame Macro
Student Loan Garnishment Will Tighten Credit More Than People Expect
If this resumes the week of Jan 7 it’s a real mechanical hit to household cash flow and credit quality. The initial rollout may start with about 1,000 borrowers getting notices in the first week, but the bigger point is scale because there is roughly 5.3 million borrowers already in default (360+ days), and that pool could swell toward 10 million as delinquencies roll into default. Once wage garnishment kicks in, the government can take up to 15% of disposable pay without a court order, which means less money for rent, food, and car payments exactly where late cycle stress already shows up.
Credit wise, delinquencies and default reporting tends to produce immediate score drops of 100–175 points, and defaults can sit on a credit file for 7 years, shrinking the lendable population fast. For banks, this is the quiet but consequential effect where a growing slice of borrowers moves from current to clearly higher risk, forcing tighter underwriting, fewer approvals, and harsher pricing across the board. At the same time, households will start prioritizing debts they can’t escape like paying student loans to avoid garnishment while letting credit cards or auto loans slide which doesn’t reduce overall stress so much as redirect it, setting up the next pocket of delinquencies rather than eliminating the problem.
tweet
Student Loan Garnishment Will Tighten Credit More Than People Expect
If this resumes the week of Jan 7 it’s a real mechanical hit to household cash flow and credit quality. The initial rollout may start with about 1,000 borrowers getting notices in the first week, but the bigger point is scale because there is roughly 5.3 million borrowers already in default (360+ days), and that pool could swell toward 10 million as delinquencies roll into default. Once wage garnishment kicks in, the government can take up to 15% of disposable pay without a court order, which means less money for rent, food, and car payments exactly where late cycle stress already shows up.
Credit wise, delinquencies and default reporting tends to produce immediate score drops of 100–175 points, and defaults can sit on a credit file for 7 years, shrinking the lendable population fast. For banks, this is the quiet but consequential effect where a growing slice of borrowers moves from current to clearly higher risk, forcing tighter underwriting, fewer approvals, and harsher pricing across the board. At the same time, households will start prioritizing debts they can’t escape like paying student loans to avoid garnishment while letting credit cards or auto loans slide which doesn’t reduce overall stress so much as redirect it, setting up the next pocket of delinquencies rather than eliminating the problem.
Trump Administration to start seizing wages of defaulted student loan borrowers in January
#MacroEdge tweet
X (formerly Twitter)
MacroEdge (@MacroEdgeRes) on X
Trump Administration to start seizing wages of defaulted student loan borrowers in January
#MacroEdge
#MacroEdge
Offshore
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Wasteland Capital
The day before Christmas Eve, and $MU went above $280, new all time high, and +233% YTD.
Someone has been a very, very good boy! https://t.co/WXB6J92sHB
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The day before Christmas Eve, and $MU went above $280, new all time high, and +233% YTD.
Someone has been a very, very good boy! https://t.co/WXB6J92sHB
tweet
Clark Square Capital
RT @mihaljevic: Great investing follows for 2026:
@ChrisBloomstran
@ElliotTurn
@tsaicapital
@MohnishPabrai
@PenderDave
@BillBrewsterTBB
@danielgladis
@Logos_LP
@LCTempleton
@GreenhavenRoad
@BobRobotti
@bogumil_nyc
@MikeFritzell
@ClarkSquareCap
@HiddenGemsInves
@david_katunaric
@evfcfaddict
tweet
RT @mihaljevic: Great investing follows for 2026:
@ChrisBloomstran
@ElliotTurn
@tsaicapital
@MohnishPabrai
@PenderDave
@BillBrewsterTBB
@danielgladis
@Logos_LP
@LCTempleton
@GreenhavenRoad
@BobRobotti
@bogumil_nyc
@MikeFritzell
@ClarkSquareCap
@HiddenGemsInves
@david_katunaric
@evfcfaddict
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Offshore
Photo
Clark Square Capital
RT @stoic_point: SAKS GOING BK
Core to our $LUXE pitch: industry structure SIGNIFICANTLY improves, partly from a transformative deal, but also competitors keep disappearing. Mkt chart needs constant updates: #3 Saks going BK. #4 FTCH parent raided by K-Feds. #8 Ssense filed for BK. Meanwhile... https://t.co/xuzo0Q71IH
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RT @stoic_point: SAKS GOING BK
Core to our $LUXE pitch: industry structure SIGNIFICANTLY improves, partly from a transformative deal, but also competitors keep disappearing. Mkt chart needs constant updates: #3 Saks going BK. #4 FTCH parent raided by K-Feds. #8 Ssense filed for BK. Meanwhile... https://t.co/xuzo0Q71IH
(1/3) Last month we pitched LuxExperience $LUXE as a long at the wonderful Spring Investor Summit hosted by @SumZero and @AlphaSenseInc. Several have asked so below is a link to our slides.
Disclaimer: note this post is not an offer or solicitation to buy/sell any security and is also not investment advice. Investors should conduct their own research or consult their financial advisor prior to making any investment decision. This post is not an offer or solicitation to buy/sell any security and is also not investment advice. Investors should conduct their own research or consult their financial advisor prior to making any investment decision) tweet
Offshore
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Fiscal.ai
RT @patientinvestt: Amazon’s operating margin has exploded from 0.2% to 11%, largely driven by their robotics tech & the market still isn’t pricing it in!
2026 will likely be $AMZN's year! https://t.co/17hBkS6LCa
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RT @patientinvestt: Amazon’s operating margin has exploded from 0.2% to 11%, largely driven by their robotics tech & the market still isn’t pricing it in!
2026 will likely be $AMZN's year! https://t.co/17hBkS6LCa
tweet
Offshore
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Clark Square Capital
It's that time again https://t.co/jJMMGesbEM
tweet
It's that time again https://t.co/jJMMGesbEM
I am ready to get hurt again https://t.co/VH8CONOgix tweet
Offshore
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Fiscal.ai
The largest e-commerce company in South Korea is trading near its lowest forward multiple ever.
Forward EV/EBITDA: 19.3x
$CPNG https://t.co/c4d5RHJ5Bp
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The largest e-commerce company in South Korea is trading near its lowest forward multiple ever.
Forward EV/EBITDA: 19.3x
$CPNG https://t.co/c4d5RHJ5Bp
tweet
Offshore
Video
EndGame Macro
Page 1.
The Crisis Isn’t the Cause…It’s the Cover
One of the hardest truths in financial history is that governments rarely admit when the system is breaking. Instead, they wait for a story big enough to justify the kind of intervention that would otherwise look reckless. Wars, pandemics, and national security crises often become that story.
Look closely at the past century and a pattern emerges. The financial plumbing is already strained, credit bubbles overextended, currency pegs fraying, leverage piled too high and policymakers face a problem: how to inject massive liquidity without spooking markets or losing political credibility. Then comes the event. A geopolitical shock, a war, or a health crisis gives them cover to do what they couldn’t do in calm times: flip the switch, flood the system, and rewrite the rules in the name of survival.
Think back to the great turning points. In 1914, the gold standard was already cracking before World War I gave governments the excuse to suspend convertibility and unleash bond financed spending. In 1940, the U.S. was still clawing out of depression when WWII allowed Roosevelt to blow out deficits and normalize Fed monetization of Treasury debt. In the late 1960s, Vietnam spending plus domestic programs strained the dollar, but only once the war escalated did policymakers have the justification to tear up Bretton Woods in 1971. After 9/11 and the Iraq War, the U.S. used national security spending as the story, while Greenspan’s Fed quietly opened the spigots to cushion a financial system still reeling from the dot com bust. And in 2020, COVID-19 became the perfect excuse for an unprecedented global money printing campaign, arriving just as repo markets and corporate debt were already flashing stress in late 2019.
The details differ, but the sequencing rhymes. The financial system shows cracks first. Then an event arrives that allows governments to act on a scale they otherwise couldn’t. Liquidity surges are justified as emergency responses, but in practice they are often preemptive rescues of fragile balance sheets.
This isn’t to say the events aren’t real, they are. Wars kill, pandemics devastate, geopolitical shocks reshape the world. But for students of monetary history, the question is whether the timing of interventions is driven only by the events, or also by what was already happening beneath the surface. Were the events the trigger or the excuse?
That’s the pattern I want to explore. When you line up the last century’s great liquidity waves with the geopolitical crises that accompanied them, you start to see that the narrative and the financial mechanics are inseparable. Policymakers need a cover story. And history suggests that the biggest liquidity expansions often arrive not just because of the event, but because the system was breaking beforehand.
tweet
Page 1.
The Crisis Isn’t the Cause…It’s the Cover
One of the hardest truths in financial history is that governments rarely admit when the system is breaking. Instead, they wait for a story big enough to justify the kind of intervention that would otherwise look reckless. Wars, pandemics, and national security crises often become that story.
Look closely at the past century and a pattern emerges. The financial plumbing is already strained, credit bubbles overextended, currency pegs fraying, leverage piled too high and policymakers face a problem: how to inject massive liquidity without spooking markets or losing political credibility. Then comes the event. A geopolitical shock, a war, or a health crisis gives them cover to do what they couldn’t do in calm times: flip the switch, flood the system, and rewrite the rules in the name of survival.
Think back to the great turning points. In 1914, the gold standard was already cracking before World War I gave governments the excuse to suspend convertibility and unleash bond financed spending. In 1940, the U.S. was still clawing out of depression when WWII allowed Roosevelt to blow out deficits and normalize Fed monetization of Treasury debt. In the late 1960s, Vietnam spending plus domestic programs strained the dollar, but only once the war escalated did policymakers have the justification to tear up Bretton Woods in 1971. After 9/11 and the Iraq War, the U.S. used national security spending as the story, while Greenspan’s Fed quietly opened the spigots to cushion a financial system still reeling from the dot com bust. And in 2020, COVID-19 became the perfect excuse for an unprecedented global money printing campaign, arriving just as repo markets and corporate debt were already flashing stress in late 2019.
The details differ, but the sequencing rhymes. The financial system shows cracks first. Then an event arrives that allows governments to act on a scale they otherwise couldn’t. Liquidity surges are justified as emergency responses, but in practice they are often preemptive rescues of fragile balance sheets.
This isn’t to say the events aren’t real, they are. Wars kill, pandemics devastate, geopolitical shocks reshape the world. But for students of monetary history, the question is whether the timing of interventions is driven only by the events, or also by what was already happening beneath the surface. Were the events the trigger or the excuse?
That’s the pattern I want to explore. When you line up the last century’s great liquidity waves with the geopolitical crises that accompanied them, you start to see that the narrative and the financial mechanics are inseparable. Policymakers need a cover story. And history suggests that the biggest liquidity expansions often arrive not just because of the event, but because the system was breaking beforehand.
tweet