February 21
Debt Rattle
* Elon Musk is building an operating system for civilization: 8 interconnected companies. $1.5T+ valuation
* Musk: Big difference between Grok and WokeGPT. ChatGPT just said the SAVE Act shouldn’t be passed
* The Year of the Fire Horse—a rare, blazing return that only comes once every 60 years
Doug Noland Weekly Commentary
Bessent: “Despite the misplaced gloating from Democrats, ill-informed media outlets, and the very people who gutted our industrial base, the court did not rule against President Trump’s tariffs. Six Justices simply ruled that IEEPA authorities cannot be used to raise even one dollar of revenue.”
Supreme Court Rules President Cannot Tax by Decree
“The Founders did not fight a revolution to replace one king’s taxes with another’s,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead. “Whether it’s tariffs, surveillance, or martial law, the pattern is the same: emergency powers become a back door for executive rule. The Constitution does not allow taxation by executive fiat.”
S&P Oil FX Gold Silver 10Y USH
Crude oil surged 5.7% this week to an eight-month high
Gold jumped $65 and silver rallied 9.3%.
Those markets appear to take war risk more seriously than stocks and bonds. | Doug Noland
January PPI is due at the end of the week. | Marc
The base effect suggest headline PPI can ease from 3.0% to around 2.6%, which would put at its slowest pace since last April. The core could ease to 3.0% from 3.3%. It has not been below 3% since last August. Still, the market is confident that the Fed will ease this year more than the median official projected at the end of last year.
Dollar Index sold through Thursday's low (slightly above 97.55) after the Supreme Court's decision. A break of 97.45 could signal a test on 97.00.
Ukraine Is Exhausted But Plans For More Years Of War | Moon
The war mongers in the U.S., in the European Union and in Ukraine have decided to ditch U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace attempts and to prolong the war until he leaves office.
Breaking the Blockade: A Tanker Loaded with Russian Gas Oil Sets Course for Cuba. Will US it intercept too? | TopWar
The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.
New York City's new socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is learning just how right she was.
Susan Rice lays out her vision of a post-Trump America
Insta: This is important. It signals the kind of dynamic that gripped Spain in first half of 1930s, as the govt of the Republic lurched btw Left and Right. Eventually, both sides hated each other so much that civil war was inevitable.
Pictures of the Week
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