Lots of ink on Mar-A-Largo and Trump Uncertainty. People are likely giving the Administration more credit for strategic planning than is deserved. Stocks are still very rich and people will continue to worry about policy uncertainty, but a dovish Fed next week might make the market’s worries disappear.
Keep an eye on capital flows, not just goods trade. “For amid all the tariff shocks, there is another question hovering: could Trump’s assault on free trade lead to attacks on free capital flows too? Might tariffs on goods be a prelude to tariffs on money? Until recently, the notion would have seemed crazy. … But last month American Compass, a conservative think-tank close to vice-president JD Vance, declared that taxes on capital inflows could raise $2tn over the next decade. Then the White House issued an ‘America First Investment Policy’ executive order that pledged to ‘review whether to suspend or terminate’ a 1984 treaty that, among other things, removed a prior 30 per cent tax on Chinese capital inflows.”
I am a long-time advocate of capital controls as a way of subordinating the Global Casino to the interests of society. Not that I think the word ‘control’ is right here. I prefer to phrase it this way: states should have the power to manage cross-border capital flows.
It is difficult to predict the outcome of Trump’s chaotic trade policies, but I have long believed the United States would lead the transformation of the international financial system away from its current state of disorder.
All told, a Mar-a-Lago Accord would represent huge downside risk for approximately zero upside gain.
It is doubly amazing that Trump officials seem to be drawn to it when there is another policy that could simultaneously lower the dollar, narrow our trade deficit, reduce interest rates, and put the federal budget on a sustainable path for years to come: cut spending, responsibly raise taxes, and reduce the fiscal deficit.
In the public’s mind, Trump and Roosevelt could scarcely be more different. The Republican Trump talks up business while his Democrat forerunner openly scorned it. Yet the two have much in common. Like the current occupant of the Oval Office, Roosevelt was a great political showman. He also cultivated particular enmities. Whereas President Trump today decries economic “globalists, opens new tab”, Roosevelt’s bogeymen were the business elite and Wall Street titans, whom he condemned as “economic royalists.”
Trump is weakening many properties that underpin dollar dominance. America’s fiscal trajectory is already unsustainable and yet Trump plans to cut taxes. Notwithstanding whatever fiction is asserted about a surge in potential US growth due to tax cuts or massive budget cuts by the Department for Government Efficiency helping balance the budget, already excessive debt and deficits are well poised to go higher. Team Trump has alluded to levies on capital inflow or taxes on those who might shun the dollar. While the Federal Reserve’s capacity to set monetary policy hasn’t been questioned yet, the Trump administration is taking a capricious and whimsical axe to many basic government programmes.
Today, the Fed’s support for foreign central banks is largely uncontroversial. And the Fed is formally independent from the White House. But institutional arrangements can be changed and traditional policies upended, especially by a president who likes to accumulate as much leverage as he can.
A wide variety of evidence suggests that retail investors, of every nation, make poor investment decisions and exhibit “anti-skill” or “perverse stock selection ability.” For example, for retail U.S. investors trading stocks, Barber, Huang, Odean, and Schwarz (2020) find that “intense buying by Robinhood users forecast negative returns.” In the recent boom of options trading, retail U.S. investors lose money on average due to “a trio of wealth-depleting behaviors” according to de Silva, Smith, and So (2023). Thus, we would expect wealth-destroying behavior from Korean retail investors, not because they are Korean, but because they are retail.
What are they buying right now? Here’s my summary of their top-50 net buys so far in 2025:
—AI, quantum computing, and robotics
—Nuclear power and other data center plays
—Crypto
Every market has an iconic group of retail investors who, like George Costanza, exemplify bad decisions leading to wealth destruction. In 1929, it was “the little fellow” buying high leverage investment trusts traded on the NYSE. In 1989, it was Japanese salarymen speculating on land and stocks. In 1999, it was mutual fund investors buying growth funds. In 2021, it was Robinhood investors buying meme stocks. Today, perhaps that group is Korean retail investors.
A year ago self-help guru Tony Robbins released a book called The Holy Grail of Investing, a paean to alternative investments in general, private equity in particular, and private equity firm shares especially.
Over the past few decades, China’s currency has been either rigidly fixed to the US dollar (1995-2005 and 2008-2010), or kept within a narrow band around the US dollar. At no time has the Chinese government allowed the yuan to move dramatically up or down, as we see with other currencies like the yen, the euro, the pound, and Swiss franc. Because of China’s exchange rate policy, Chinese monetary policy is essentially made in the USA. A strong dollar in the foreign exchange markets leads to deflation in China. Period, end of story.
The conventional economic models we use show that in the short-run, a permanent primary deficit increase of 1% of GDP—roughly in line with the cost of fully extending the individual provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—raises inflationary pressure after 5 years equivalent to a loss in household purchasing power of $300-1,250 per household in 2024$. (This is a subset of the total economic effect of higher debt.) A more unconventional model raises the possibility that the effect is even higher in the short-run. This effect alone is more than half the benefit of the policy itself.
A tariff is like tax imposed on those goods. Like a tax, it will increase the price level once and for all, but should not have any lasting effect on inflation (if the Fed behaves appropriately).
The “complete works” of the Trump administration has been generating a lot of uncertainty. The heightened level of uncertainty could strongly increase the demand for money. If the Fed is late in recognizing that fact, and keeps the money supply “contained”, the outcome will most likely be, not as many have argued, stagflation, but a possibly signicant fall in inflation, output and employment.
In a way, the Fed can easily “bring the Trump administration to its knees”!
The strategic complementarity view suggests some interesting and unexplored possibilities. In macroeconomic thinking since Keynes, sticky prices have been the main, and sometimes the only “friction” making recessions less than optimal. (Some models have financial frictions too, but that’s a subfield rather than the central case.) Well, rather than devote billions to fiscal and monetary stimulus, rather than construct elaborate Fed strategies and stabilizers, why don’t we make prices and wages less sticky? In turn, if stickiness is a coordination failure, successfully getting everyone to change at once could work. On March 1 at 2 AM, everyone reduce every price, wage, and nominal contract by 10%. If that is, in fact, adjustment to a better equilibrium, only held back by nobody wants to move first, it will stick and eliminate the recession.
Similarly, small countries in recession are often advised to devalue their currency. Their wages and prices are “uncompetitive.” Lowering wages and/or prices through “internal devaluation” is thought to take too long and cause a recession because nobody wants to move first. Rather than devalue the currency (again), the country could just, effectively, reset the clock by a similar policy.
Strategy’s legacy software business does not generate cash. Servicing the high dividend on STRK will require further financial engineering, most likely through additional equity issuance. This will inevitably lead to dilution for existing common stockholders. STRK, in effect, functions as a perpetual payment-in-kind instrument, combined with an out-of-the-money call option — an elegantly convoluted mechanism primed for significant dilution.
Fast forward to 2009, when the early drafts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will begin to have a Medical Loss Ratio requirement for insurance companies which mandated the spend 80-85 cents of every dollar taken in premium to be spent on the care of the subject beneficiary. Once this became more evident to be reality, many of the largest health plans started to consider the strategy of vertical integration. The law said they had to spend 80-85 cents of every dollar taken in insurance premium on care of the patient but did not stipulate that the insurer could not own the assets which the 80-85 cents was spent on.
Pricing wasn’t a big problem for Walgreens when there were lots of PBMs, because it had the ability to say no if the deal was unreasonable, and still maintain a flow of customers…
Today, there are really only three PBMs - Express Scripts, Caremark and OptumRx - serving 80% of customers. And if there are three gatekeepers for customers, you really have no choice but to sign on the dotted line, no matter the terms. No business, not even one as large as Walgreens, can afford to lose 20-30% of its revenue, which is what happens if you refuse to do business with one of the big PBMs.
Pakistan is reeling after this week’s hijacking of the Jaffar Express by the terrorist-designated “Balochistan Liberation Army” (BLA). It’s impossible to independently confirm the details given strict state censorship, but around 400 people were taken hostage, including servicemen traveling home on leave. The BLA demanded the release of what they described as political prisoners, but the military staged a daring operation to end the day-long ordeal instead. At least two dozen people were killed.
Whichever way one looks at it, the Indian angle is therefore questionable, but Pakistan pushing it is meant to accomplish three goals. First, it’s intended to rally Pakistanis behind the government by blaming their historical rival for this latest terrorist attack. Second, Pakistan also hopes to rally the international community – or at least some of its SCO partners like China – against India. And finally, Pakistan might authorize kinetic action in Afghanistan, but on what it’ll present as an anti-Indian basis.
Where the Chinese system differs, however, is in its use of struts, which literally jack the barge up, making it more stable and resilient to bad weather and able to remain in action in heavier sea states. This should also result in a much higher throughput of cargo, vehicles, and personnel. On the other hand, the construction also makes for a notably large target and very static high-value target, suggesting that it would be most relevant after an initial landing, supporting the arrival of mass follow-on forces and supplies after a degree of tactical stability has been established.
Lastly, in line with the Anti-Secession Law and China’s 2022 white paper, Beijing may introduce a “One Country, Two Systems” model for Taiwan, similar to the construct in Hong Kong. China’s enactment of a “Basic Law” for Hong Kong in 1990 — seven years before the handover of sovereignty — could foreshadow similar preemptive legal measures for Taiwan. Some Chinese scholars have proposed a “Taiwan basic law” loosely modeled after the Hong Kong version, which outlines Taiwan’s purported autonomy under Communist China’s rule.
As 2025 is an election year, it is likely that these kind of scenes will intensify. Opposition parties will try to do everything within their means to show that “the people” have had enough. It is doubtful whether this will move the needle in any significant way in terms of a shift in votes: so far sentiment seems very much in favor of security forces in the Milei camp, and against Milei or authorities in general when it comes to the opposition camp. Those votes have not changed.
What has changed after yesterday’s scenes in Congress, is that the already fragile Milei team in terms of representation in both chambers will splinter up into even smaller pieces. Since Milei’s election win there have been quite a few defectors, and some representatives have left stating they are now independent — some others, like Ramiro Marra in the city of Buenos Aires, were ousted by Milei’s party.
This was neither here nor there now. President Vance listened to the intelligence briefings from his senior advisors, debating the proper course of action. In truth, he knew there was little he could do. The all-consuming fire was raging out of control, and there was no top-down control model to keep it in check. The chain of events caused by unaccountable NGO’s had, just like when in control of the left, created after-effects that took on a life of their own. The bargain with the devil Trump made years back had no off-ramp, and never had there been more uncertainty as to what things would look like in four years. Vance, in solemn resignation, knew he had no choice but to push on to the bitter end.
Despite the promises of the first and core pillar of the AUKUS security compact, the United States simply won’t have enough Virginia-class submarines to spare. To make matters worse, the SSN AUKUS — meant to be Australia’s long-term solution — is likely to encounter significant delays and issues, similar to Britain’s past submarine programs, due to challenges in design maturity, production capacity, and technical complexities, making it an unreliable solution for Australia’s submarine needs. Faced with a stark reality, it is time for Australia to reconsider its options.
Those who advocate blocking the CR are eliding a very important distinction about what power Democrats actually have. Yes, Democrats have the power to block the passage of the CR, which would fund the government through September 30. Yes, they can force a government shutdown. This does not mean that Democrats have the power to produce a better policy outcome by blocking the passage of the CR. Unless what you’re after here is really just an emotionally satisfying experience of watching Democrats “fight” the president — that is, unless politics is really just entertainment or symbolismfor you — that’s what you should care about.
Here, then, can we see the long historical roots of the open, neoliberal state pointed to as an ideal by Ramaswamy and Musk. Innocently or not, these libertarian-leaning businessmen’s conception of the polity is almost indistinguishable from the “post-national state” that devoutly left-wing leaders like Canada’s Justin Trudeau have set out to devolve their countries into. The “globalism” so often decried by populists is neither left nor right but the logical product of the rationalist universalism embraced by the 20th century’s post-war consensus. It is the inevitable result of treating people, and peoples, as interchangeable units in a mechanical system – that is, of regarding them without any distinguishing sense of love.
More than just preventing harm, the FCPA has resulted in enhanced business practices across U.S. and foreign corporations. The prohibition on bribery and corruption creates a predictable environment that is favorable to investors and builds trust with stakeholders who American businesses interact with. The FCPA allows U.S. corporations to compete based on the value of their product or services rather than whether they can pay the largest bribe, creating space for the most innovative and highest quality products to come into worldwide markets.
And when Trump’s interventionist policies fail, that will mean more danger—for as Mises pointed out, failed government interventions often lead to still moreintervention. Bureaucrats stubbornly continue to try to achieve their desired results through more interventions that also fail, spinning increasingly complex webs of ineffective controls. That dynamic made Mises deny the possibility of a viable “third way” between free markets and socialism. Once you start down the socialist road, he wrote, you tend to go further and further from freedom.
For nearly five years, entrepreneur Bryan Johnson has been attempting that feat of which magicians and daredevils have boasted throughout history: defying death. In 2021, Johnson launched “Project Blueprint,” an anti-aging initiative with the eventual goal of equipping a human being to live forever. The venture capitalist’s X (formerly Twitter) profile features the slogan “Conquering death will be humanity’s greatest achievement.”
many of these young women are what i would call really hot regular girls — RHRGs for short. they’re not sex workers, nor do they usually have modeling careers or massive social media followings. they're more likely theatre majors at NYU, or aspiring nurses, or recent grads struggling to afford rent.
for decades, these exclusive perks were typically reserved for models — women with agency contracts and industry connections. but social media has democratized this system, allowing the new generation of RHRGs to access similar lives of luxury.
rather than relying on exclusive model networks to fill up nightlife venues, promoters now recruit newcomers straight off flights from their hometowns — wide-eyed young women who will gladly go out with them 5 nights a week. as these women hop on tiktok to document their extraordinary nightlife adventures, the pipeline grows stronger. more girls see it, more girls want in, and soon enough, the system isn’t just sustaining itself — it’s expanding.
With the potential for rents like these, real-estate developers would rush to invest in the rezoning area, were it not for an additional detail—the imposition of MIH, which effectively precludes condominium development and requires below-market rents for 25% to 30% of units. The theory of MIH is that rezonings confer an undeserved land-value windfall on property owners, some of which should be captured for a public benefit, for example, affordable housing. However, the de Blasio administration recognized that the cost of the affordability requirement far exceeded any windfall and that to induce developers to participate, the cost of MIH would need to be offset with public subsidy. Initially, the city negotiated with the state legislature to secure an extraordinarily generous long-term tax exemption for new buildings, known as Section 421-a, to offset the cost of providing affordable housing. Even with the tax exemption, MIH worked economically only for new rental buildings in the city’s strongest housing markets.[20]
The combination of MIH and 421-a likely would have worked economically for new rental buildings in the Midtown South Mixed-Use Plan rezoning areas. However, 421-a expired in June 2022, and its generous terms are no longer available. In 2024, the state legislature passed a new tax exemption known as 485-x, which is far less generous, especially for the large buildings likely to be produced at FARs of 15 or 18. The main difference is the imposition of “prevailing wage” requirements. Much of the net present value of the tax exemption, which offsets the cost of the below-market units, is effectively diverted to labor.[21]
I enthusiastically applied to various PhD programs, but was unceremoniously rejected, and upon reaching out was met with “…engaging in outdated notions of environmental determinism.” “…you’re playing with fire by suggesting evolved cognitive differences… ” “The political climate on our campus is highly unfavorable for these areas of research.” “…this is probably the worst time in history to be studying such topics.” “…you will likely encounter extreme difficulties in securing grants.”
…evidence supporting my hypothesis that the proposed Arcticist traits in modern East Asian and Inuit populations primarily represent adaptations to arctic climates, specifically for the adaptive challenges of highly interdependent survival in an extremely dangerous, unpredictable, and isolated environment, with frequent prolonged close-quarters group confinement, and exacerbated consequences for social devaluation/exclusion/expulsion. The article concludes with a reexamination of previous theories on the roots of East Asian psychology, mainly that of rice farming and Confucianism, in the light of my Arcticism theory.
More bullish noises are coming from the corner of the internet that’s concerned with amateur biohacking and self-optimization. In 2022, the wellness podcaster Andrew Huberman said that the effects of nicotine create almost “the optimal state for getting mental work done.” Medical researchers are beginning to explore the potential cognitive benefits: an ongoing study at Vanderbilt’s medical center investigates whether nicotine patches could alleviate memory loss in people with mild cognitive impairment.
Comparing their gene variants with the size of their estimated brain gaps flagged 64 influential genes, but Huang and his colleagues focused on seven: MAPT, TNFSF12, GZMB, SIRPB1, GNLY, NMB and C1RL, partly because these all have a particularly strong effect on brain ageing.
Clinical trials have also shown that their activity can be targeted by 13 drugs or supplements. These include cholecalciferol, a supplement for vitamin D deficiency; dasatinib, a leukaemia drug; diclofenac, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory; doconexent, an omega-3 fatty acid; estradiol, the type of oestrogen commonly used in hormone replacement therapy; hydrocortisone, commonly used to treat eczema; and mecamylamine, a drug that lowers blood pressure.
The others were nicotine; prasterone, which relieves vaginal pain during sex during the menopause; the supplements quercetin and resveratrol; sirolimus, which is commonly used to suppress the immune system after a kidney transplant; and testosterone.
In a now famous 1988 speech to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Martin had told his colleagues “give me half a tanker of Iron and I will give you an ice age.” It sounds crazy, but it was a provocation with a point. Phytoplankton only needs tiny amounts of iron to do its thing. And he was right about the ice age bit too. In the decades since Martin’s speech, paleoclimatologists have found good evidence in ice core and ocean sediment studies to show iron deposition over the ocean really did increase ahead of each ice age.
As more and more experiments showed iron’s prodigious ability to fertilize plankton blooms, some scientists began to draw the obvious inference: Do this on a wide enough scale, and you could soak up enough carbon to put a dent in global warming.
At this, the big environmental NGOs got very uncomfortable.
But overall, I think the past two years have been a fun experiment in semi-free-market medicine. I don’t mean the patent violations - it’s no surprise that you can sell drugs cheap if you violate the patent - I mean everything else. For the past three years, ~2 million people have taken complex peptides provided direct-to-consumer by a less-regulated supply chain, with barely a fig leaf of medical oversight, and it went great. There were no more side effects than any other medication. People who wanted to lose weight lost weight. And patients had a more convenient time than if they’d had to wait for the official supply chain to meet demand, get a real doctor, spend thousands of dollars on doctors’ visits, apply for insurance coverage, and go to a pharmacy every few weeks to pick up their next prescription. Now pharma companies have noticed and are working on patent-compliant versions of the same idea. Hopefully there will be more creative business models like this one in the future.
But Tirzepatide is not the top GLP-1 drug. That title currently goes to Retatrutide, which is basically Tirzepatide Plus. Like Tirzepatide, Retatrutide contains a GLP-1 receptor agonist, GIP, and it also adds in glucagon, resulting in some interesting effects that are particularly pronounced in the liver. In fact, one phase 2 trial found that Retatrutide has excellent effects on markers of liver health.
And why shouldn’t it be? Retatrutide is lean mass sparing, meaning that what loss happens has even more to do with fat than occurs with Ozempic or Tirzepatide. Retatrutide is also metabolism boosting and metabolism sparing. Where weight loss tends to lead to decreased metabolism, becoming harder and harder as it continues, Retatrutide blunts that effect. In one particularly revealing experiment, mice were injected with Retatrutide or nothing and subjected to the same diets and temperatures. The Retatrutide mice lost 35% of their body weight while the matched mice lost just 20%. When Retatrutide-treated mice were treated with glucagon antibody antagonists, this added weight loss effect stopped. Exploration reveals that Retatrutide increases fat mass reduction through increased lipid oxidation, supplementing energy levels, leading to maintained locomotor activity. Perhaps this is also related to why it seems to reduce visceral (belly) fat so selectively.
Meanwhile, the bacteria… are doing extremely well out of this whole thing. They get to ride around inside octopus bodies, safe and protected. Geographically they’ve spread over thousands of miles of ocean, which is pretty good for a microbe. The octopus has evolved a bunch of mechanisms to make sure the bacteria are happy and well fed, and the males in particular have grown giant glands to give the bacteria lots of elbow room. True, they have to pay the rent by producing tetrodotoxin. But that really seems a small price to pay. Tilt your head sideways, and you could argue that both male and female blue-rings are simply puppets, dancing to the tune of their bacterial masters.
The test was a success, so he incorporated the Holly Steam Combination Company, patenting his more than 50 inventions and exporting district steam heating to other cities. By 1882 at least twenty Holly steam systems were in operation, including: Denver, CO; Auburn, NY; Troy, NY; Springfield, MA; Detroit, MI; and Hartford and New Haven, CT. (The oldest, in Denver, has been running continuously since 1880.) By far the biggest system, however, was in New York City.
It became clear in Lubeck and other leading League towns that the Dutch threatened the very existence of the Hanseatic order. As a result, the Hanseatic League went to open war against the Dutch in 1438, restricting their access to the Sound. Unfortunately, their old ally the Teutonic Order took the Dutch side and retaliated by impounding the assets of Lubeck merchants.
Worse again again again, and maybe worst, those with “with a history of CVD, diabetes, or cancer” at the start of the study were excluded from the data! Could any of those excluded people have got sick, especially diabetes, from porking out on seed oils? The end of the study did include those who died of these diseases, and therefore must have developed any of these during the study. Could a tiny pat of butter, as we’ll see, have caused cancer and killed that quickly?
We want to introduce a third financial force into drug development, alongside profit-making and benevolence – a wild force that everyone in medical research whispers about behind closed doors, but ignores in public with a rictus grin. As a motive to open up your wallet, there’s nothing to beat this force. It’s more powerful than greed and saintliness multiplied. It is desperation.
Our idea is to charge desperate sick people to take part in clinical research. In particular, desperate sick people who are very rich – and their loved ones.
