Blake Hampton

How I suspect Trump will be in the future:

I would say that one of the biggest red flags I’ve seen throughout all this chaos is the near-constant resignation of career civil servants. My jaw was on the floor for nearly 30 minutes when I read about what happened at the Treasury with Musk — forcing themselves in like that, and then forcing out a 36-year official who was trying to keep them out as acting Treasury Secretary. That is fucking insane. I read multiple newspapers every day, and there is story after story after story of the same things happening all over government. It’s honestly quite scary.

I'm in shock: "Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that the administration would begin interviewing candidates for the Fed job this fall. Leading contenders include Kevin Warsh, a former adviser to President George W. Bush who was a Fed governor from 2006 to 2011, and Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council. Bessent is also seen as a possible contender for the job by some Fed watchers." Kevin Hassett is seriously a contender for next Fed Chair. He's a joke.

We Now Know How AI ‘Thinks’—and It’s Barely Thinking at All - WSJ Here’s How Big the AI Revolution Really Is, in Four Charts - WSJ

I would like to say that I actually like Mohnish. He's taught me a lot.

"Mr. Vance has attracted the most brutal trolling. His “peasants” comment offended many Chinese. In a widely shared A.I.-generated video, a character resembling Mr. Vance, in a pink jacket, pink nails and hot pink lipstick, applies eyeliner while saying in a promotional female tone, “Sis, hillbilly brand eyeliner, made in China, reliable quality.” Another video shows a cartoon character saying: “Vice President Vance, I’m a Chinese peasant. Do you realize your tariff policy will lead to the soaring price of your eyeliner?” There are so many posts about the topic that Mr. Vance is now known as “the eyeliner man” on the Chinese internet." For China’s Trolls, ‘Chairman Trump’ and ‘Eyeliner Man’ Are Easy Targets - NYT

In Dimon's annual letter, he mentioned that even before the tariffs, the economy had been slowly weakening over the previous three years. I feel the same. It's interesting to me how companies have generally been posting lower year-over-year earnings, along with nothing but layoffs in the news, yet the market just continued to hit all-time highs. Just my thoughts.

The WSJ business section today was depressingly bad. Nothing but missed expectations and pulled guidance. I think the only single article about something good was on gold. But the market is up!

Horseshoe theory. What we need is rationality.

You must be a rich man indeed

Does anyone have a BMI to Future Performance ratio?

But the joke quickly comes to an end when the bond market finally decides to revolt. This country has been acting fiscally retarded for many years now, and it certainly feels like we’re closer to the end of it than the beginning. I don’t think most people, both here and in real life, truly grasp just how big of a deal this is. You may have lived your entire life in a system that just worked. That may not hold true in the future.

(in billions of dollars) Total U.S. government spending (2024): 7,403 - Department of Health and Human Services: 1,738 - 23.5% - Social Security Administration: 1,530 - 20.7% - Department of Defense: 1,232 - 16.6% - Interest on Treasury Securities held by the public: 909 - 12.3% - Department of Veterans Affairs: 472 - 6.4% Above five as a percentage of total spending: 79.5% --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now tell me, is Congress or our president really interested in touching any one of these? They love to say, "We'll cut taxes now and address spending later," but will they really? The old people own the vote, and almost all of this money is going directly to them. To even mention cutting any one of the above is effectively political suicide. Yet they continue to cut taxes. And they continue to push an inflationary agenda while our country has to roll over its old debt at ever higher rates. As a younger person, this is an outrage. These people are selling my future, as well as my friends future, so that they can appease the stupid masses. It is a colossal joke.

Financial Report of the United States Government (2024)

That is insane.

I almost asked for a MAGA hat for Christmas, but I thought $50 was too expensive. I was going to call it my thinking cap. I still might get one.

I don't understand why it's so difficult to get ahold of good S&P 500 data, considering that it constitutes a large amount of every single person's retirement account.

Yeah I just thought about it for more than 2 seconds, and $36 trillion is an insane amount. That was way wrong.

I don't know how accurate this figure is, but GuruFocus says the total liabilities for the S&P 500 total about $36 trillion. https://www.gurufocus.com/economic_indicators/5751/sp-500-total-liabilities

Well, I measure productivity increases in GDP, and debt to GDP has been growing at a rapid clip for a while now. I would say that, over time, and adjusted for increases in productivity, there is a direct 1:1 correlation between inflation and the money supply. The problem that the United States is in is that the amount of borrowing is getting to a dangerous point. I believe that debt markets can break in a way that directly leads to inflation. If Treausry market liquidity is expected and it dries up, and the government is still continuing to run these large deficits, the only person who can step in to fill that void is the Federal Reserve. They accomplish this by printing money. 2020 and 2008 were not the same. 2008 was about easing, 2020 was a liquidity crisis. We almost had another on April 9th.

I think a lot of that debt hasn’t rolled over yet at these higher rates. Large-cap equity has some of the best financing terms in the world, and they’re generally smart enough to take advantage of that. Likewise, the market is just dumb enough to finance them for long stretches at low rates.

I don’t understand how deflationary forces could ever be big enough to offset these levels of deficits and monetary expansion. As Paul Volcker said in his book, serious deflationary events only happen when you’re facing a systemic collapse in the financial system. I think that it’s entirely possible that this could happen, but I also think there are too many safeguards in place to let it truly collapse. The U.S. government can always save the day with more money printing.

Now, we have a president who is destroying what little faith the world still had in us, even though we rely on that same world to absorb our debt. How exciting.