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Today's Summary

Federal government civilian headcount got slashed by 162,000 in October and by 172,000 over the three months of September, October, and November. Have we reached Peak Debt? It seems likely, and the future will be dominated. Wall Street took heart from the data and ended higher today. The BLS has relied on outdated methods, questionable data, and endless revisions for decades. Inflation and people FEELING poor is how elections are lost. We are in what Jeremy Grantham calls our third and probably most epic asset bubble in only 25 years. We no longer know what is real even if we see it with our lying eyes because of AI. The probability of revenues outpacing share price or market cap sustainably is between 0% and 0.0%. Mark OConnor: Meghan McCain parroting Cruzs and Levins attacks almost verbatim is odd and difficult to understand. Tucker Carlson reams out Ted Cruz in an interview that was a scene from Deliverance. The Elephant in the Brain hits a range of topics including the origins of laughter. Interest payments and tax receipts have doubled since the pandemic pandemic. PEPFAR has helped strengthen the continents health-care systems. Central banks have been diversifying away from assets denominated in USD and RMB. Case-Shiller National Index increased 1.3% year-over-year (YoY) in September. Joan Taylor, Professor Emerita of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism, Kings College London, says the Christmas story is one in which peace and joy are proclaimed. Candace Owens, the self-proclaimed most popular podcaster in the world, was absent from the TPUSA conference. Samantha Macklemore is founder and CIO of Patient Capital Management. Barry Ritholtz is co-founder, chairman, and chief investment officer of Ritholz Wealthy Management LLC. Mark Obeidallah: Having the right mindset is probably the most important thing. Tesla has created like a green light for, giving away additional equity. ZoomInfo gave its founder and its CEO nearly 10 million shares to incentivize him. Geriatric veterinary care is in great shape, with dogs and cats living on average 11.3 years. U.S. data centers are being built out at a stupendous rate, exceeding the 1990s telecom boom and drawing comparisons to the railroad boom of the 1800s. China is a scientific and technological leader, but it doesnt seem to be driving breakthrough progress the way the US, Britain, Japan, and Germany did. This is a longer edition of the Portfolio Construction newsletter, presenting the many ways that I have witnessed anti-scientific tendencies in finance and economics academia. Fartcoin (+14%), SPX (+12%), and PUMP (+9%) led gains. Bitcoin dropped 30% and is finishing the year down single digits. Bitcoin tested support repeatedly, failed to reclaim higher levels. Buying and trading cryptocurrencies should be considered a high-risk activity. Bitcoin traded volatily throughout 2025 while the S&P 500 and gold maintained steady upward trajectories, with Bitcoin currently around $87,982. The market is treating gold and silver as legitimate crisis hedges and treating Bitcoin as something else. The risk is that silvers run is now crowded and fragile. Bitcoin price dropped to support once again last week, and the bulls defended it well, pushing the price back up to close the week out at $88,656. Bulls will want to continue the push this week, level by level if need be. The more touches on support, the weaker it gets and the more likely it is to fail. Crypto gaming has experienced a growing trend of games closing down. The Clarity Act and concerns over whale selling drove a $952 million outflow from digital asset investment products. China issues first batch of fuel export quotas for new year, at a total of 19 million tons. Iran halted pipeline gas deliveries to Iraq this week, leaving Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities with an electricity gap of 4,500 MW. Iran halts pipeline gas. Iraq and Kurdistan extend oil export deal to March 2026.