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Today's Summary

Despite initial concerns, the business impact in the district seems to be as onerous as some had feared. Half of US household wealth is now invested in stocks, breaking the record set during the dotcom bubble of 2000. US gold reserves are now at 90-year lows, while the rest of the world has pushed their holdings. The conclusion is that our entire way of life is in deep trouble, top to bottom. We discussed: Financial Markets and Valuations Wealth Inequality and Societal Tensions. US exceptionalism was the result of easy access to capital to take risk, but that may also be changing. Germany is getting self sufficient and will probably buy less US dollar denominated instruments. The Indian rupee is down 50% over the past decade against the USD. Richard Haass reflects on the dangerous power shifts in the US and globally since Donald Trump. Most young Americans will not be able to afford a house. Mortgage market moribond because the mortgage market is as much. as 50p percent too high. Early Benchmark suggests a downturn, as does QCEW, Powell conjecture. Wall Street DOES have plans for Venezuela. California home sales up 2.6% YoY in November, according to NAR. Tesla is due to reveal its total sales for 2025 later on Friday. The real question is not what happens in Venezuela but what happens the USA, says Gf. The closer the threat of US to Russia and/or China, the harder the response will be. The DHS called for “100 million deportations” was perhaps the most direct nod yet to those who believe the United States must be reconstituted as a white nation. Punta Gorda House Prices Down 21% from Recent Peak, Austin Down over 17%. 19 states and D.C. were below their previous peaks. It has now been 41 months since the real peak in house prices reached. The typical pattern is for most of the useful (and lucrative) applications to manifest decades after a new general-purpose technology is introduced. In 1873, a bunch of railroad-related loans went bust, causing a banking crisis that threw the economy into a decade-long depression. Domination of the global AI industry is going to largely come down to which country can attract more Chinese talent. China is selling a bounty of useful consumer goods to Europeans at cut-rate prices. Riot Riot Platforms terminated a prior at-the-market program established in August 2024, which was terminated effective Tuesday. Goldman has floated the idea that a sustained climb toward 2 million barrels per day by the end of the decade could shave several dollars. Most of Japans greenfield FDI is in one single industry - semiconductors. Japan is an obvious alternative production base — its smaller and more expensive than China, but infinitely more secure. The model for a big FDI push should be the tourism promotion. Samourai Wallet developers paid the U.S. Department of Justice as a fee that was part of their guilty plea. Bitcoin pushed past the pivotal $90,000 mark after several failed attempts. Oil prices averaged $69 per barrel in 2025, the lowest in five years. Walmart upped its starting pay for truck drivers to $115,000 per year. Autonomous taxis and trucks have yet to demonstrate a clear necessity or safety advantage over human-driven vehicles in real-world conditions.