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Today's Summary

Lennar is selling more homes, but at much lower prices, including lower prices per square foot. Revenues from homebuilding fell 6.9% year-over-year. DP Penn says the BLS report is not biased just massively incomplete due to government shutdown. Wolf Richter says September number was a complete and total outlier. Italian police are investigating ties of Mohamed Hannoun and his NGO (based in Genova) to Hamas. Rents for single-family homes have spiked in San Francisco, Chicago, NY City, Rochester, Kansas City… rose more slowly in others… fell in Austin, Denver, San Antonio, Phoenix… Condo prices in Oakland, CA, dropped 1.5% in November. Using AI wastes tons of energy and is bad for the planet and makes the “owner’ think the AI is valued and useful and so can replace workers. China has seen a number of big changes in the innovation pipeline over the years. Interest payments by the federal government on its monstrous Treasury debt rose by $10 billion (+3.3%) in Q3 from Q2, to $300 billion. Interest payments ate up 33.2% of tax receipts available to pay for interest expense. The worst possible solution is to kick the can to our children and their children. Wolf Richter: Higher inflation would mean higher wage increases. Gold is NOT a currency but as a reserve has overtaken US $ securities in the worlds other central banks for the first time since 1996. The way out is big economic growth (which will cause tax revenues to grow), moderate inflation and some budget discipline. Chris Martenson suggests a huge increase in investment called greenfield FDI. Computer chips are essential to every high-value product in a modern economy. Only a small sliver of the Chinese top AI researchers working in America has gone back to their home country since 2019. This section is for generalists. The specific investment implications are found in the subsequent Investing section. Since Nov 24, the accumulated losses by silver shorts is a staggering $14.5 billion. Discrimination against White men rose significantly in America starting in the mid-2010s. Japan lost the future in 2008, not in 1990, writes Ito Takatoshi. Japanese workers produced less per hour in 2019 than in 2007. Abenomics aims to revitalize existing Japanese companies. Japan struggled to attract skilled foreign workers in the 2010s. Young workers often have low salaries, since they expect to get steady raises over the course of their careers. A Netflix series depicting the life that awaits foreign workers and entrepreneurs in Japan could potentially be a big hit. Barry L. Ritholtz: Wealthy families are launching offices to manage their money at a record clip. Howard Stern set to be canceled after a stunning 20-year run on SiriusXM. Howards audience dropped anywhere from 5x to 10x what was misreported. Kevin Hassett is now an 85% favorite to become the next Federal Reserve Chair after Jerome Powell. UK has formally created a new property category for crypto. SEC filed a complaint against AI Wealth, Lane Wealth, AIIEF, and Zenith Asset Tech Foundation. Tokyo-listed Metaplanets has spent roughly $3.78 billion accumulating bitcoin at an average cost of about $107,600. Firm has set an ambitious target of owning 210,000 BTC by the end of 2027. Bitcoin price hovered below $90,000 near $80,000 today as traders made late push to recover year-end losses during thin holiday trading. Solana is the sixth-largest crypto asset by market cap. Pudgy Penguins is expected to have paid up to $600,000 to wrap the Dogwifhat Sphere for seven days. China controls 94% of permanent magnet production and 90% of rare earth refining. Analysts told Decrypt the companies may be entering too late to overtake early leaders like Polymarket and Kalshi. Pump.fun started paying people to post clips of the launchpads top creators, the opposite of traditional livestreaming platforms, which require their creators to source, manage, and pay these “clippers”