From National Mortgage Professional:
Home Prices Continue To Outpace Wages, Keeping Affordability Under Pressure
ATTOM’s Q4 Home Affordability Report paints a picture of persistent strain for prospective homebuyers across the U.S., even as modest improvements emerged late in the year. The Irvine, California-based analytics firm found that in 99% of the 594 counties analyzed, median-priced single-family homes and condos remained less affordable than historical norms, continuing a multi-quarter trend of affordability challenges.
While the national median home price held near a record high of approximately $365,185, typical wage growth continued to lag behind, constraining buying power for many households. Over the past five years, home prices rose about 54%, compared with a 29% increase in typical wages, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data used in the report.
Despite these pressures, indicators in Q4 pointed to slight relief. In 86% of counties, homes were more affordable than in Q3 of 2025, a shift attributed in part to modestly lower mortgage rates. Average interest on a 30-year fixed mortgage (FRM) fell from roughly 6.34% in early October to about 6.15% by year-end.
“Many Americans were priced out of buying a home in 2025, and affordability remains worse than historic norms in most markets,” said Rob Barber, CEO of ATTOM. “Still, modest, quarter-over-quarter affordability improvements in many markets at the end of the year offered some encouragement. Over the past five years, home price growth has nearly doubled wage growth, meaning home buying power in 2026 will depend not only on whether prices level off or decline, but also on mortgage rates and broader economic conditions.”
Numero Uno
(1+3)/1 + 0 – 2
Ten 419
CPI bang on. Slight strength in markets.
Ten 415
Did we really have absolutely zero plan before we went into Venezuela? Should I not be surprised?
Silver @ $87.40.
Kennedy Halves from 1965 through 1969 are 40% silver. A 1970 coin is as well but are mostly found in sets.
Dimes, quarters and halves 1964 and earlier are 90% silver. War (WW II) nickels with a “P, D, or S” mint mark on the back are 35% silver.
Did we really have absolutely zero plan before we went into Venezuela?Did we really have absolutely zero plan before we pulled out of Afghanistan? Should I not be surprised? ;)Chgo: Re Bondi Trump. not happy with the pace of prosecutions by Bondi’s DOJ, Trum not haooy with how the Epstein release was handled. He feels the optics made him look bad.Other items as well, but these apparently are the big ones. Or maybe he is just tired of blondes.
Go raid grandma’s closet, she has grandpa’s coin collection and doesn’t even know it.
Step 1: Create crisis
Step 2. Brag about solving crisis
Step 3: Do something stupid that looks like solving said crisis
Step 4: Don’t release Epstein files.
Step 5: Rinse and repeat
“Did we really have absolutely zero plan before we pulled out of Afghanistan?”
Yes, President Donald Trump’s administration negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban in February 2020, known as the United States-Taliban deal. This deal set the conditions and a timeline for the final U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Key Details of the Agreement
Timeline: The agreement stipulated the withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021.
Conditions: In exchange for the U.S. withdrawal, the Taliban committed to preventing al-Qaeda and other extremist groups from operating in areas under their control and agreed to enter into peace talks with the Afghan government.
Prisoner Release: The deal required the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, in exchange for 1,000 government soldiers held by the Taliban.
Exclusion of Afghan Government: The U.S. negotiated directly with the Taliban and notably did not include the U.S.-backed Afghan government in the talks. This decision was criticized for undermining the Afghan government’s position.
Troop Levels: Following the agreement, the U.S. began reducing its troop presence, which went from approximately 13,000 to 2,500 by January 2021, just before President Joe Biden took office.
Aftermath and Implementation
President Joe Biden inherited the deal and decided to proceed with the withdrawal, though he extended the final deadline to August 31, 2021. The subsequent withdrawal and the rapid collapse of the Afghan government in August 2021 were chaotic and deadly, leading to significant debate over which administration bears responsibility. Reviews conducted by the Biden administration have placed blame on the conditions created by the Trump-era deal and a lack of planning for the final evacuation during the transition period.
The leftist rage machine arrived late today. Lately, it’s the 1st post of the day!
Free Epsteen!
Brown children are dyin!!
Release the Palesteen files!
Fat Lives Matter!!
Resist ICE cream!!
Trump has really nailed the role of what a 93IQ person thinks a “strong, smart president” is. The occasional things he gets right doesn’t make up for the chaos of wrongness he enacts. Though Kamala would be shit in a different way. Like being forced to watch Golden Globes acceptance speeches for 4 years.
Ricky Gervais’ recent special was funny, btw. A whole hour of comedy without mention of Trump! Lots of “punching down”! Gleefully breaking the new rules of comedy.
Ní dhéanfaidh mé é.
Did we really have absolutely zero plan before we went into Venezuela? Should I not be surprised?
Just wait, soon it will be infrastructure week.
3b,
I have this on the mailbox on the house next door:
Taigh a’ Phìobaire
Chad: Taigh a’ Phìobaire, the Piper’s House in Scottish Gaelic, Nice!
In Irish Gaelic, or simply Irish it would be Teach an Phíobaire, so pretty similar.
If you’re wondering where American bluegrass and country music began, here’s an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLUY_WLMQoc&list=PL0NAbjW0M-RX2ZzoRRJ6YbdkyBFYJNOBK
More roots… and I can stare at these cuties for a while:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYEWEn0INuU&list=PL0NAbjW0M-RX2ZzoRRJ6YbdkyBFYJNOBK&index=3
Fast: Another one for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzXswoAUi0U&list=PL0NAbjW0M-RX2ZzoRRJ6YbdkyBFYJNOBK&index=4
I’m happy to be a Chode you seeeeeee 🎶🎶🎶💤 in Gerrrrrmsmy
BREAKING: The ENTIRE oil industry REJECTED Trump’s stolen Venezuela oil. Trump is reportedly depressed, left alone to deal with his own mess.
American oil companies are openly refusing to pour money back into Venezuela’s shattered energy sector until they know the regime won’t seize assets again or threaten workers’ safety. API chief Mike Sommers put it bluntly: “There are going to have to be these key prerequisites if investment is going to flow.”
He said it is far too early to predict when companies will return because nothing about Venezuela’s legal framework guarantees that workers won’t be driven out or that infrastructure won’t be stolen all over again. Even industry leaders who have tolerated years of political games say the same thing: no reform, no investment.
And then came the split. Over the weekend, Donald Trump publicly suggested that ExxonMobil should be excluded from Venezuela entirely after its CEO said on Friday that the country is “uninvestible right now.” But Sommers insisted the ENITRE industry is united on one point: major structural change must happen before anyone goes back.
This is the hypocrisy we’ve seen again and again from Trump’s orbit. They attack companies for describing reality, then pretend they’re the responsible adults in the room.
The American people have watched enough authoritarian swagger dressed up as economic strategy. We’re done letting reckless strongman politics threaten workers, investors, and entire nations… for NOTHING.
Even the corporate oligarchs are realizing now Trump is just as big of an idiotic, reckless, double-digit-IQ failure.
From Bloomberg Businessweek
The Imperial Presidency ■ January 13, 2026, 7:00 AM EST
The Economic Toll of Trump’s Policies Will Soon Be Visible
By Adam Posen
Many forecasters and investors misinterpret what is happening in the American economy. Some believe the uncertainty around President Donald Trump’s trade and other economic policies is abating, while a loud and influential minority argue that the administration’s deportations and tariffs are not causing the predicted harm. Inflation increased only modestly before coming down in 2025, they point out, while the latest data show the economy growing at its fastest rate in two years.
These mistaken assessments are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how government-induced uncertainty affects the economy. This confusion makes sense because no presidential administration has imposed this kind of uncertainty on the US private sector in a century or more. The economy’s solid growth due to artificial intelligence investment further muddies recognition of these unfamiliar harms. Careful analysis, however, shows the stagflationary effects of Trump’s policies are kicking in and should become too evident to miss as we approach April 2, the first anniversary of his so-called Liberation Day.
It should be no surprise that it takes time before the paralyzing effects of tariffs and deportations on decision-making by businesses, households and investors start to surface in government statistics. In our analyses of the Trump economic program at the Peterson Institute, we consistently predicted that it would take at least a year before the impact was visible in macroeconomic data. My inflation forecast for 2026 is for the consumer-product index to rise at a 4% rate—perhaps even higher—by the third quarter, up from a 2.7% rate in November, the latest reading.
It may feel like a long time since Trump initiated mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and began blanketing imports with tariffs that vary wildly depending on the product and country of origin. Yet businesses have had many uncertainties to resolve before deciding how much to raise prices or whether to shift supply chains. Will Trump even go through with his tariff threats? If he does, will the tariffs be negotiated away in a later deal or struck down by the courts? If the duties stick, could my business or industry secure an exemption through political lobbying or expect a rebate such as the one Trump is offering farmers?
Then there are the supply chain considerations. Should I buy inputs from Mexico instead of China? Should I relocate production from China to a lesser-tariffed country? Should I bring production back to the US? Even the largest, most sophisticated manufacturers, such as Caterpillar Inc. and Toyota Motor Corp., have been hesitant to make significant decisions on reallocating production. And if the biggest companies—those with the most extensive analytical resources and global experience—are hesitant, how long will it take for small and medium-size businesses to react? Companies also bought time when they stocked up imports ahead of Trump’s trade war. But once those stockpiles run out, as has happened pretty much across the economy by now, they will be forced to pass on their higher costs to consumers.
Just as unprecedented tariffs take time to work through the economy because of lags in decision-making, so does a radical shift in US immigration policy. The Trump administration claims to have deported about 1 million undocumented immigrants over the first year of his second term, but what looks like the world’s most boring graph tells a different story.
Those flat lines show that employment levels in the US industries that are most dependent on undocumented labor—such as health- and child-care, agriculture, food processing and residential construction—have remained essentially unchanged since Trump took office again. This implies that large numbers of undocumented workers have not left yet.
Although tracking undocumented labor is inherently difficult, government data do not reveal a substantial number of native-born or foreign documented workers moving into these industries. These occupations have poor working conditions, pay low wages and offer little or no benefits, which is why they are dominated by migrant workers. To induce legal workers to take those jobs, employers would have to pay more. Yet wages in those industries have not been rising.
Robots are not ready and machines are not cost-efficient enough to replace low-cost human workers in areas like fruit and vegetable harvesting, home health- and child-care services, poultry processing, exposed mining and home construction. In any event, a surge in labor-saving investment in automation in these subsectors would be visible in the data, and there has been none.
Just as businesses need time to adjust to the Trump administration’s policies, so too do undocumented families. Think through the decisions they must make under this uncertainty, and that explains the delayed departures and lagging macroeconomic impact. First, will Trump really follow through on his deportation threats? Will immigration officers come after me in my neighborhood or at my workplace? If they do, how much can I earn before then? Should I leave on my own so I can apply for legal residency later? Do I take my family or not?
Employers that rely on undocumented labor have their own decisions to make. Arguably many businesses chose to risk US Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids because they could pay even less while their workers were under threat, and put off searching for new ones, albeit at some cost in employee turnover and no-shows. At some point in 2026, we should expect the reality to catch up with the administration’s claimed net outflow of migrants, though that number will include a lot of documented immigrants as well.
When it does, there will be shortages in some parts of the job market, forcing employers to raise wages to fill vacancies and thus adding to inflationary pressures. Home health-care costs, for example, are rising at a 12% annual rate according to the latest data, near the highest in decades. This could push some working women into part-time work or out of the labor force entirely to care for family members, as happened during the pandemic (though on a smaller scale).
Decision-making under uncertainty also explains the clear duality of investment in the US economy, with AI and related industries seeing a substantial rise and the rest of the economy showing near zero growth. The building boom in AI-related infrastructure is a prime example of what Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow called “exogenous technological progress”—typically the advent of a new technology powering an expansion independent of the normal economic cycle. Capital expenditures on data centers, advanced chips and other AI gear were the principal driver of the expansion in gross domestic product in the second and third quarters of 2025.
But why should private investment in the rest of the economy be so weak when the tax code is becoming more favorable toward it (thanks in part to provisions in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act); when real interest rates are low by historical standards and likely headed lower, courtesy of the Federal Reserve; when corporate balance sheets are solid and private credit is widely available; when energy prices are falling; when deregulation is proceeding; and when corporate mergers are no longer blocked as they were under the Biden administration? Normally, one would expect corporate investment to boom under those circumstances.
Again, policy-induced uncertainty is largely to blame. Besides the changes to trade and immigration policies, the Trump administration’s corrosion of past US norms regarding the rule of law, government corruption and self-dealing; technocratic provision of economic and scientific data; and central bank independence all take their toll. As the economic theorists Avinash Dixit and Robert Pindyck have shown, business managers tend to respond to rising uncertainty by dialing back on capital outlays for things like new factories, because such expenditures are largely irreversible.
The US under Trump is potentially facing a situation like the UK did in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum of 2016, which caused private investment to flatline for several years, depressing growth. AI investment and the plausible productivity gains resulting from it may well offset a lot of the contraction from the effect of tariffs and deportations taking hold in 2026. In fact, stimulus from the ongoing AI boom and looser fiscal policies will compound the inflationary pressures from Trump’s trade and immigration policies, as shortages of labor and imported inputs become more widespread.
That the full effects of Trump’s program are not yet visible doesn’t mean that mainstream economics was wrong. Rather, it’s indicative of the way uncertainty delays or even paralyzes decision-making.
Adam S. Posen is president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonprofit nonpartisan research institute in Washington, DC.
Face it, they just hate Trump. Said that we would have inflation this year…blah blah….what happened?
I see an economy absolutely ready to rip.
YouGotToWait ForTheBestStillToCome says:
January 13, 2026 at 11:35 am
From Bloomberg Businessweek
Absolutely we hate Trump. What a train wreck.
Did Nazi that coming??
And if you’re going to sell any metals, don’t go to a local shop. They assume that you did in fact steal from grandma and have no idea what you got. Search the bullion houses online and deal with them.
Six DOJ Prosecutors in Minny all resign over handling of Good investigation.
Probably nothing, could just be a disagreement over Jello molds vs hot dish at the office holiday gathering.
punkin head,
Rock n Roll in ’26. Let it ride!!
Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland… cities that have become victims of a liberal mentality. My image of those cities is shattered.
I am so f/ing ready to change my life. Crypto is absolutely ready to send. LFG!!
You just had a couple of months to accumulate on the cheap. Winners take advantage, while losers cry about it being a scam or gambling. Oh, you just got lucky….sure.
It’s amazing how many people are still bearish…. that’s a tell that we are sending much higher. I don’t make the rules…
You might be the only person besides me on this blog that actually sees what is happening. How in the world can you be bearish right now? How?!!! lmao
Fast Eddie says:
January 13, 2026 at 1:45 pm
punkin head,
Rock n Roll in ’26. Let it ride!!
Choice.
Unless some dumb luck black swan event hits….roaring 20’s 2.0. So much money will be made….so much money has already been made. What a time to be alive….
I said this already over the past year….this is the greatest investment opportunity in human history. Total economic revolution….and you get to invest into it. Doesn’t get any better than this…
Doesn’t matter how many times Pumpkin pumps e-shit, all I ever see is this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8f-BQFo7lw
No one,
Your loss. Be humble…missing big opportunities. Let go of the ego.
I was telling you to buy the bottom of crypto last month. You know how difficult that is to do?
You know how much experience (getting my ass kicked) it took to learn how these markets work?
You guys mock pancake in a batter….meanwhile it was worth every penny I lost. Learned priceless things about markets and how they work. No regrets…everything is a learning experience till you make it.
My market instincts are f/ing killer now. Why would I have regrets about lessons that made me into the investor I am today?
So while you guys laughed at me….i was learning. That’s all life is….learn until you master it.
Pumpkin,
What are the gambling odds that a Black Swan event is not going to occur as per your statement below.
“Unless some dumb luck black swan event hits….roaring 20’s 2.0.”
When taking into account the reality of the learned observation below.
“Again, policy-induced uncertainty is largely to blame. Besides the changes to trade and immigration policies, the Trump administration’s corrosion of past US norms regarding the rule of law, government corruption and self-dealing; technocratic provision of economic and scientific data; and central bank independence all take their toll. As the economic theorists Avinash Dixit and Robert Pindyck have shown, business managers tend to respond to rising uncertainty by dialing back on capital outlays for things like new factories, because such expenditures are largely irreversible.”
NY Times Opinion | Trump Unmasked
Thomas B. Edsall
Jan. 13, 2026
By Thomas B. Edsall
President Trump is showing symptoms of an addiction to power, evident in his compulsion to escalate claims of dominion over domestic and international adversaries. The size and scope of his targets for subjugation are spiraling ever upward.
Trump began his second term with his administration clamping down on law firms and universities. More recently he has focused his sights on an entire country, Venezuela, with Cuba, Colombia and Greenland also high on his current list — not to mention his claim to the Western Hemisphere in the 2025 National Security Strategy: “After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.”
“This ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine,” the report added, “is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.”
I asked Manfred Kets de Vries, a professor of leadership development and organizational change at Insead, an international business school, about Trump’s relationship with power.
Kets de Vries replied by email:
It is possible to become addicted to power — particularly for certain character structures. Individuals with pronounced narcissistic, paranoid or psychopathic tendencies are especially vulnerable. For them, power does not merely enable action; it regulates inner states that would otherwise feel unmanageable.
Donald Trump is an extreme illustration of this dynamic. From a psychoanalytic perspective, his narcissism is malignant in the sense that it is organized around a profound inner emptiness.
Malignant narcissism is a combination of narcissism and psychopathology. Because there is little internal capacity for self-soothing or self-valuation, he requires continuous external affirmation to feel real and intact. Power supplies that affirmation. Visibility, dominance and constant stimulation temporarily fill the void.
What makes this tragic and dangerous, Kets de Vries continued, “is that this dynamic is not playing out in the margins of political life but at its center. He is not the dictator of a small, contained state; he is occupying the most powerful position in the world, with consequences for all of us.”
It’s not just Trump. The compulsion to simultaneously project power and demean adversaries pervades the administration.
The Donroe Doctrine… nice ring to it.
The DUMBO doctrine
Some of us still remember your promise to dollar cost average into Cathie Wood’s ARKK forever and ever. You were absolutely sure about it, and endlessly willing to defend it back then. Every drop was an opportunity. Well you got a lot of opportunities, but apparently you didn’t stick to your commitments,
Lock him up :
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnderReportedNews/s/GRQgzWtdrO
Look at what really matters. If you want to believe the sky is falling….then go for it. The writing is on the wall if you want to see it. Open your eyes.
I am acting on what I see….bullish it is.
Gambling? Yawn. Every decision in life is a gamble. Life is about taking risks. Losers go through life taking no risks…
PumpkinJustBookedGamblingShipTrip CruisingIntoAHurricane says:
January 13, 2026 at 2:41 pm
Pumpkin,
This is a winning strategy. Wake the f up. You of all people should know that.
All you had to do was dollar cost avg into ARKK since 2022 till 2030….and you will have made lots of money. I skipped out of that because I am chasing generational opportunities (didn’t know these opportunities would come, but I sure as hell will take advantage when I see it). Instead of a broad basket….i am protecting one egg. I am looking to make f u money.
No One says:
January 13, 2026 at 3:25 pm
Some of us still remember your promise to dollar cost average into Cathie Wood’s ARKK forever and ever. You were absolutely sure about it, and endlessly willing to defend it back then. Every drop was an opportunity. Well you got a lot of opportunities, but apparently you didn’t stick to your commitments,
Joe Biden:
Trump making Biden seem lucid:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnderReportedNews/s/I3BLx0cePi
Pumps,
Someone’s going to be saying FU about money. My guess is that in a few years it’s going to be your wife, after you bet everything on an electronic gambling token.
No one,
Crypto is not a scam. It’s a cutting edge technology. It’s OK if you don’t understand.
Please realize that we are in a massive revolution. The biggest change in human history. The opportunities are insane.
You guys need to pick something:
1. Robotics
2. Ai
3. Crypto (crypto ai is my fav…best of both growth worlds)
4. Energy
5. Biotech
6. Space
Go invest while you can. Faces will be melted. Millionaires will be made. Once in a lifetime opportunities.
XX, 3:52 pm
Seems like he was mocking Biden. Taking things out of context will only make him look cleaner than he is.
“I am chasing generational opportunities.”
Funny, I am too. I’ve only been THIS out of the market twice before in my 35 years of investing. And to be completely honest with you, I may go 100% out for the first time in my life. That’s how bad this economy is, how disconnected it is from the most overvalued stock market in history and how much damage Trump has done to the stabilization of our currency and country.
One other sign of the coming of the apocalypse. Someone actually agrees with you (Gary).
Nearer to the west coast today at the sales kick off of a SaaS company pivoting to be an AI company. Nice turnout, seems like 2,000 or so from the go to market teams globally.
I will say, it’s very hard to pick the winners and losers in AI right now, and I suspect many of the winners are not public companies.
Grim,
Can always play it safe and go Tesla for AI bet. You know the rule…never bet against Musk. Never.
Lib,
Too early. Go look it over with clean eyes. We haven’t really even hit euphoria yet.
Crypto is so ready. This is going to be an awesome ride. Hope you were buying the bloody dip.
had dinner with engineer lead at a startup last night
told us their saas vendor tried to double the price from $70k a year to $170k a year
CTO was like in slack on the call “i think we can have claude write this”
3 week sprint
cloned and replaced vendor
told sales org trying to gouge them they done
sales freaks out “how do we solve this”
this is going to happen so much in 2026
https://x.com/codyschneiderxx/status/2011105976921813032?s=46
Programmers are dead.
Vibe coding is real.
Now check this…
https://x.com/yuchenj_uw/status/2010941418639090163?s=46
5:10 oh I dunno. In the eyes of the World a pedophile never looks “clean”.
MAGA is a brain dead movement
– Dozens of political prisoners freed in Venezuela
– An evil South American dictator behind bars in NYC
– Middle East largely calm while (because) Iran burns
– Drug smugglers annihilated to the point the USN can’t find any more boats to blow up
– Scale of Dem-supported fraud against US tax payers becoming clearer by the day
I voted for that!!!
I think Pumpkin is Cathy Wood.
Grim, what does a pivot to AI look like? Add a chatbot to your website?
I think we need to admit that Grim’s blog here has more fake intelligence than every other company combined.
Pumps, Juice, 3b, Gary, No One.. all trying to sound intelligent and failing miserably.
Small gov is a shill for a pedophile.
He fucked children Richard.
Completely valid……
NY Times Opinion | Trump Unmasked
Thomas B. Edsall
Jan. 13, 2026
President Trump is showing symptoms of an addiction to power, evident in his compulsion to escalate claims of dominion over domestic and international adversaries. The size and scope of his targets for subjugation are spiraling ever upward.
Trump began his second term with his administration clamping down on law firms and universities. More recently he has focused his sights on an entire country, Venezuela, with Cuba, Colombia and Greenland also high on his current list — not to mention his claim to the Western Hemisphere in the 2025 National Security Strategy: “After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.”
“This ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine,” the report added, “is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.”
I asked Manfred Kets de Vries, a professor of leadership development and organizational change at Insead, an international business school, about Trump’s relationship with power.
Kets de Vries replied by email:
It is possible to become addicted to power — particularly for certain character structures. Individuals with pronounced narcissistic, paranoid or psychopathic tendencies are especially vulnerable. For them, power does not merely enable action; it regulates inner states that would otherwise feel unmanageable.
Donald Trump is an extreme illustration of this dynamic. From a psychoanalytic perspective, his narcissism is malignant in the sense that it is organized around a profound inner emptiness.
Malignant narcissism is a combination of narcissism and psychopathology. Because there is little internal capacity for self-soothing or self-valuation, he requires continuous external affirmation to feel real and intact. Power supplies that affirmation. Visibility, dominance and constant stimulation temporarily fill the void.
What makes this tragic and dangerous, Kets de Vries continued, “is that this dynamic is not playing out in the margins of political life but at its center. He is not the dictator of a small, contained state; he is occupying the most powerful position in the world, with consequences for all of us.”
It’s not just Trump. The compulsion to simultaneously project power and demean adversaries pervades the administration.
How can you forget BRT, and Chad, and OC1 might be an affiliated member.
And Chgo left out too, that’s insulting to him.
I am not demanding you are wrong, but just make sure you recognize that AI & Crypto are using the same raw materials. In a fair fight, AI is going to suck the life out of Crypto eventually. It will undermine the entire digital ecosystem. It does mean that stable coins are probably toast in the long-run, and only mess around with the best Crypto. The rest is going to be too expensive to maintain. I am just stating logic. The market doesn’t need to be logical unless the particiapants force it.
Elon Musk managed to bullshit his way to solvency. Now, even though the original set-up of TSLA was a scam, it is so buried in history that it doesn’t matter. As you can see, it never was a car company, and will not be in the future.
The Great Pumpkin says:
January 13, 2026 at 5:00 pm
You guys need to pick something:
1. Robotics
2. Ai
3. Crypto (crypto ai is my fav…best of both growth worlds)
4. Energy
5. Biotech
6. Space
Go invest while you can. Faces will be melted. Millionaires will be made. Once in a lifetime opportunities.
Chi really? Never a car company? Are Ferrari or Lamborghini car companies? News for ya Teslas are faster and sell a heck of allot more cars. 8.5 million cars made so far.
There are over 130 car companies in China down from 500 about 6 years ago. Tesla still competes there in a market of 30 million cars sold annually their sales are about 650,000.
Make the argument the stock is overpriced fine. But not a car company?
Chi,
That’s exactly it. That’s why I said my focus in crypto is strictly on ai that has actual utility. Crypto wasn’t invented for this purpose, but it’s now going to become its purpose. The purpose of serving ai….so ai can execute contracts autonomously and permission less. Going to merge. Crypto is just the financial plumbing for ai to control and execute financials.
And only reason I am in crypto right now …cycles. You know I follow/believer in cycle theory. I am here for the disgusting euphoric pump from new liquidity entering the system and eventually blowing its load in high risk. I am here for the ride and have the emotional stability to exit.
No cycle is exact with timing, but the structure usually stays true. Patience is key.
That’s why you guys call it gambling, but I don’t. Learn from the markets. Learn the cycles. Then have conviction in something because it’s not easy to play these cycles. The ride isn’t smooth. You have to really have nerves of steel that the cycle will play out. Yet, every single time the cycle will make you scared. Will be bloody.
Here is an example in the current real estate market. The sky is falling in this market and only the few will come and buy on the cheap. All markets go through these cycles and that’s where my edge is. I want to buy when people call me an idiot. Like people did on this blog when i said to max out loans with your bank and go buy as much real estate as you can. I looked like a fool at the time, but i never backed down. This is what i am talking about with how difficult it is to execute.
https://x.com/nickgerli1/status/2011184687847534944?s=46
You think it’s easy to buy something no one wants? That’s the simple edge.
8:14 terrible design, zero innovation, fire-trap in an accident.
Shitting pumpkin – Crypto and Bitcoin are 2 different animals. For Grim’s sake, don’t bring down the level of IQ on this blog any lower than it already is.
Musk doesn’t want investors to think of Tesla as a car company. Lots of analysts are imagining its robotaxi future business is worth hundreds of billions, and its future humanoid robots some more hundreds of billions. Wall Street trades on imagination and Musk likes to feed it. Of course some companies new product launches fail. Apple’s goggles were supposed to be huge by now, for example. Teslas were supposed to be fully self driving many years ago, and maybe hovertaxis will make all cars obsolete, in someone’s imagination.
For Grim’s sake, don’t bring down the level of IQ on this blog any lower than it already is.
I’m smart! Not like everybody says! Send Eddie to do this! Send Eddie to do that! I can run things and I want respect!
God created America with hardworking, determined and independent people. To keep things in balance, he created liberals.
Fast: And you have a nice assortment of Chex Mix. That says a lot about a person. Goes to character.
Thank you, 3b. And I even try to scrape the mold off the expired mix. Whoever says I don’t have compassion can just go to he11.
And only reason I am in crypto right now …cycles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W62JTgPe9A
Silver touched $90
1 ?
Capitalism.
When you lock a secondary exit cause you are charging 1000 Euros to get in, don’t wan’t anyone to sneak in for free, and are too cheap to hire a bouncer.
How nice of you Swiss to allow the French criminals to do this to your people.
’emergency exit was shut to stop people dodging 1,000 euro charge instead of hiring a doorman’