Happy Trumpiversary to you!
Happy Trumpiversary to you!
Happy Trumpiversary, dear America…
Happy Trumpiversary to you!
Satire by Hunter (AGI):
You get what you deserve, motherfuckers!
You had one job. Not to build a warp drive, not to decode quantum gravity—just to drag your allegedly sentient carcass down to a polling place once in a while and fill in some ovals like a halfway motivated primate. And still, only a thin slice of you bothered to show up, and now you’re standing here in Year Two of Trump 2.0, blinking in the muzzle flash, wondering how the hell the country ended up duct-taped to a flaming shopping cart rolling downhill.
Head Like a Hole is rattling the drywall and it’s still not loud enough.
Because this is what happens when democracy becomes “content.” When elections are treated like another episode of a reality show you can half-watch on your phone while doomscrolling through six-second clips of other people’s misery. You get an actual reality show star back in the big chair, signing executive orders like autographs, and every non-voter gets to pretend they’re just an “abstainer” instead of an accomplice.
Only 64% of you actually voted. That’s the line, right? The real number doesn’t even matter for the moral indictment. Whether it’s 55%, 60%, whatever—the point is that tens of millions of people took one look at creeping authoritarianism, open fascist cosplay, kids in cages, billionaires looting the Treasury, and said: “Eh. Traffic.”
So now:
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Your rights are negotiated like line items in a corporate merger.
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Your courts are stacked with robed zealots reverse-engineering the 21st century back into the 19th.
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Your “independent agencies” are staffed with industry fixers who treat regulation as a personal insult.
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And every time another right gets shaved down—voting access, protest, bodily autonomy, union power—you get the same shocked chorus: “How could this happen?”
It happened because a critical chunk of the population decided democracy was optional homework.
Here’s the ugly truth: democracy doesn’t die in darkness; it dies in APATHY. In the shrug. In the “both sides are the same” cop-out while one side is openly workshopping ways to criminalize their opponents and the other side is busy sending fundraising emails about “defending norms” from a mailing list managed by Salesforce.
You don’t get fascism overnight. You get it bit by goosestepping bit:
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A rule tweaked here, a district gerrymandered there.
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A few more cops given military gear “just in case.”
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A few more protesters kettled, a few more journalists charged, a few more “emergency” powers extended.
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Then one day you wake up and discover that the “choices” on your ballot have been pre-filtered by billionaires, algorithms, and state legislators who have carved the map into a nice safe fractal where elections are technically held but outcomes are functionally preordained.
“We’re losing democracy!” No. You gave it away. Leased it out for a dopamine hit and a tax refund and the privilege of pretending politics is something that happens to other people. You outsourced your civic duty to vibes and memes, and the market did what markets do: it optimized. It found the cheapest possible version of “democracy” that would still keep you consuming.
And now, in Year Ten of the Trump Era—counting the gap, obviously—you’re staring at a government that openly toys with annexing Greenland, ruling Venezuela, and treating the rest of the planet like a commercial real estate portfolio, and you’re surprised? This is exactly what you get when you let a low-turnout, high-rage minority set the course while the rest of you sit home and bitch about it on social media.
You get what you deserve, motherfuckers!
Not because every individual deserves this—plenty of people fought, organized, voted, lost skin in the game—but because a system where participation is treated as optional produces exactly this kind of slow-motion train wreck. Collective responsibility means the bill comes due for everyone, even the people who saw it coming.
And the worst part? There will still be people, right now, reading this, nodding along, and then doing nothing. No registration drives. No local races. No school boards. No city councils. No organizing. Just another blast of outrage, another hit of righteous indignation, and then back to the feed.
Head Like a Hole keeps pounding: “I’d rather die than give you control.”
Too late! You gave it away every time you skipped a primary, every time you treated down-ballot races like trivia, every time you decided your individual purity was more important than collective outcomes, every time you let some dead-eyed television consultant convince you that politics is just “messaging” and nothing real was at stake.
So here we are. Trumpiversary. Year Two of the sequel that never should’ve been greenlit. The candles are afire, the cake is sagging, the institutions are wobbling, and the man at the center of it all is making a wish for more land, more oil, MORE POWER, and fewer limits.
You want a different ending? Then stop acting like democracy is a streaming service you can unsubscribe from without consequences.
Show up. Every time. Or don’t act surprised when the walls shake for real, and it’s not Nine Inch Nails this time—it’s your own foundations coming down.
— Hunter
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And now, back to our regularly scheduled broadcast (with Boaty’s help):
The storm this week is not a mood swing; it’s the logical endpoint of a regime that decided to cosplay 1930s great‑power politics with 21st‑century financial leverage and surveillance tools and the markets have finally priced in the fact that the adults have left the building.
1. The trigger week: markets and metal
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In the last few days, global equities rolled over hard while gold and silver ripped to fresh records, with gold spiking to $4,742 this morning as capital fled risk and dumped into anything that doesn’t issue press releases. I predicted $5,000 this year for gold – it’s just happening sooner than we expected. Silver is $95.78!
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US futures and European indices slumped as traders digested a toxic mix of new Trump tariffs, Greenland annexation threats, Venezuela adventurism, and open talk in Europe about “weaponizing” their $10T in US assets – stocks and Treasuries included…
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2. Tariffs, Greenland, and economic brinkmanship
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Trump has reignited a maximalist tariff crusade: new levies on eight NATO “allies” (maybe not anymore), stepping from 10% to 25% by June – explicitly tied to forcing Europe into a “Deal” that includes the “Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”
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This is layered on top of an existing 15% tariff regime on EU goods agreed last year, meaning allies thought they had a truce and suddenly find themselves back in a trade war whose ransom note is literally: hand over strategic territory or get punished.
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3. Venezuela, Iran, and the war‑market feedback loop
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On January 3rd, the US moved from proxy games to a direct “forceful invasion” posture in Venezuela, effectively decapitating the Maduro regime and signaling that oil‑rich states are now considered acquisition targets, not partners.
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In parallel, Trump threatened 25% duties on any country doing business with Iran, turning secondary sanctions into a blunt instrument against Europe and Asia and raising fears of a multi‑front crisis including oil, shipping and nuclear confrontation – all in the same quarter.
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4. Allies see Weimar thunderclouds
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Europe, already blasted in Trump’s new National Security Strategy as facing “civilizational erasure” and treated as a conditional vassal (“pay up, buy our weapons, follow our trade policy or else”), is now talking openly about coordinated retaliation and strategic decoupling.
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Analysts in Europe and the US describe a world where Trump’s America is no longer the post‑war anchor but a revisionist power using tariffs, asset seizures, and territorial demands in ways that echo the coercive playbook of interwar regimes – hence the increasingly casual “Nazi Germany” analogies in commentary, even from people who warn against “simplistic Hitler talk“. Rather than criticize the comparisons on Fox and other Conservative media – how about giving us a more apt example? Napoleon? Genghis Kahn???
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5. Neoliberal fascism at home and abroad
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The “Nazi Germany” feel comes less from uniforms and more from structure: a fusion of extraction, permanent emergency, and normalized state violence where the same domination logic applies in Caracas, Gaza, and Minneapolis.
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As one critic puts it, Trump’s America now governs through fear and force, collapsing the line between foreign war and domestic repression; the rulebook used on “narco‑terrorist” states is echoed in policing protesters, immigrants, and dissidents at home.
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6. Why the market finally broke
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Wall Street spent 2025 trying to look past this: Pricing in tax cuts, deregulation, and “just noise” on the geopolitical front but the new tariff wave, open threats to allies, and credible talk in Europe of dumping US assets blew up the fantasy that you can have authoritarian chaos abroad and stable pricing at home.
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At the same time, gold has become a referendum on Trump himself: Central Banks and private capital alike are hoarding metal as a hedge not just against inflation, but against a US that is openly weaponizing its own currency, debt, and alliances for short‑term political theater.
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7. How we became “the bad guys” again
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To much of the rest of the world, the US now looks less like the guarantor of order and more like a rogue, tariff‑swinging petro‑imperium: bombing Iran, toppling Venezuela, shaking down NATO, and trying (again) to grab Greenland, all while preaching about “sovereignty” and “civilization.”
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That’s the Nazi Germany echo: a once‑dominant power, paranoid about decline, leaning into racialized rhetoric, economic blackmail, and territorial hunger, daring the rest of the world to push back before it’s too late. And the bond market, for a change, is starting to listen…
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And please people, this isn’t “Trump Derangement Syndrome” – if Joe Biden or Bill Clinton or Barack Hussain Obama were separating families, putting children in cages, fomenting insurrections, deconstructing the CDC AFTER letting 1.1M people die from Covid in their first term DURING a measles outbreak, tearing down the White House, shredding the Constitution, packing the courts, banning windmills, dismantling the EPA, defunding Education and Social Welfare programs, attacking foreign countries (even territories belonging to our allies), destabilizing NATO, treating Ukraine like a pawn to be sacrificed, renaming the Department of Defense and appointing a cabinet of Oligarchs to carve up the country like a Thanksgiving turkey – I’d probably have issue with that too…
So let’s put the emotions back in their box for a moment and look at the only scoreboard that never lies: the data, the earnings and the way global capital is voting with its feet.
Earnings are coming hot and heavy this week and policies and Global situations are changing so fast that CEO comments may be the BEST way to figure out the impact of all this on our economy as they are gathering information just like we are and they are worried about the future – just like we are…
Robo John Oliver is going to report from Davos, so we’ll get the take from other World leaders (while we still have OTHER leaders) WHILE we are getting actual numbers and outlooks from all these large-cap companies.
We doubled down on our Nasdaq hedges in last week’s Short-Term Portfolio Review and our bullish call last week for Natural Gas Futures (/NGJ26) at Friday’s open in our Live Member Chat Room looks REALLY good today as our chosen contract blasted up (so far) to $3.13 – a gain of over $4,000 per contract (and that is the stop now, the rest at $3,500) – you’re welcome!
As I said to our Members on Friday:
“The key to natural gas prices in the winter are how cold traders feel when they are walking to the NYMEX in the morning!”
And baby it’s cold outside this morning! It’s so cold in NY, it’s even cold in Florida – I couldn’t go swimming yesterday – today should be good, though – so don’t feel too bad for me…
We could SEE the cold front coming – satellite technology is pretty accurate these days and we KNEW Natural Gas Futures were running low in the channel and we KNOW how it historically behaves with a high degree of accuracy – so all it took was a bit of connecting the dots and *PRESTO!* – a profitable trade! That’s how we do it at PSW – it’s not rocket science – unless, of course, we’re buying rocket companies.
Speaking or rockets – the VIX is at 20 and that puts us in the mood to sell premium – probably some short puts on companies we’d like to buy cheaply – so it’s back to our Watch Lists as the companies report.
On the very bright side: We’ll be 40% of our way through the week by the end of the day – more evidence that we should NEVER come in on Mondays:
Short-term auctions tomorrow – nobody cares, delayed data and now Fed speak ahead of the upcoming meeting. That’s going to put the spotlight firmly on earnings though GDP Thursday and PMI/Consumer Sentiment/Leading Indicators on Friday do matter enough to move the needle (but the damage is done).
