Is Elon Distracted?
Is Elon Distracted?
An interesting narrative has taken hold in the media in recent days…
The New York Times is representative of the vibe: “Elon Musk is facing questions about how much attention he is paying to his businesses as he advises President Trump on the direction of the federal government.”
Most of the focus is on publicly traded Tesla — down an eye-watering 48% from its all-time highs in December. Monday brought a one-day drop of 15% “amid concerns that include declining electric vehicle sales and politically driven protests against the manufacturer,” says the NYT.
(More about the latter of those two issues tomorrow…)
To be sure, Musk has a lot of irons in the fire — Tesla, X, xAI, SpaceX, Boring, Neuralink…
But that’s always been the case. Are the DOGE efforts that he added to his plate after Election Day that much more of a “distraction”?
To whatever extent Musk is “distracted” these days, it’s not by DOGE. It’s by something else altogether.
If you belong to the Paradigm Mastermind Group, you already know what we’re talking about. Our AI authority James Altucher calls it “Elon’s endgame.”
“I believe that right now, Elon Musk is quietly executing the final phase of a master plan that no one’s talking about… and I’m confident this will be the venture that crowns Elon as the world’s first trillionaire.”
According to James’ sources, this groundbreaking AI technology — up to 9,000% more powerful than current AI systems — could finally go online on Tuesday March 18. That’s only five days from now.
The undertaking is so big, Musk is going in on it with none other than AI chip leader Nvidia. And James figures on Tuesday, the world will learn about a third player in the venture — a $1 billion AI company that he believes could surge 50X by next year.
James just uploaded a video laying out the opportunity at hand. Click here to learn about “Elon’s Endgame” before it becomes headline news next week.
DOGE and the D.C. Budget Follies
Speaking of DOGE, it hasn’t accomplished squat yet — not if the U.S. Treasury’s own figures are any indication.
Around the middle of every month, the Treasury issues a monthly statement of its income and outflows for the previous calendar month.
We ignored the February report because Donald Trump was president for only one-third of January. So the March report, issued yesterday afternoon, would be our first indication of how much government excess the DOGE boys are hacking away at.
Answer: Not much.
Here are the numbers and the comparisons with February of last year…
In fact, Uncle Sam registered the highest February spending ever — even exceeding Joe Biden’s first full month in office, February 2021. And Biden had the pandemic as an excuse.
But don’t take it from us, take it from the conservative Manhattan Institute. “DOGE savings are so small as not to be identifiable in monthly spending totals,” the think tank’s Jessica Riedl tells the Financial Times.
The Trump administration’s defenders would tell you — and they have a point — that spending is authorized by Congress. As the narrative goes, progress will come over time as the White House works together with a Republican-controlled House and Senate.
But that narrative doesn’t account for the spend-a-palooza the Republican-controlled House passed this week.
Fiscal year 2025 started nearly six months ago, but Congress still hasn’t passed a budget. All it’s passed is a series of kick-the-can “continuing resolutions” — rubber-stamping previous spending levels, with a few adjustments here and there, for a few weeks or months at a time.
On Monday, the House passed another “CR,” this one buying time until the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
“DOGE is fake if Congress continues to appropriate money at the same levels as before DOGE. It's smoke and mirrors,” tweets Daniel McAdams, who was one of Rep. Ron Paul’s senior aides until Paul’s retirement in 2013.
This latest CR passed with only one dissenting Republican vote. House Speaker Mike Johnson is exercising an iron discipline over his caucus that Nancy Pelosi undoubtedly recognizes and respects.
The lone dissenter, the cantankerous Kentuckian Thomas Massie — the closest thing to Ron Paul in Congress today — called BS on the whole charade: “Congress just locked in a large portion of the Biden agenda for the first nine months of Trump’s presidency.”
The measure still needs to pass the Senate, with at least a handful of Democratic votes, to avert a “partial government shutdown” Friday night. It appears those Democratic votes aren’t forthcoming, at least not without some concessions from the Republicans.
Just guessing here, but those concessions probably won’t involve spending cuts.
Amid this circus, Donald Trump has chosen to go on a jihad against… Thomas Massie.
“HE SHOULD BE PRIMARIED, and I will lead the charge against him,” Trump bellowed on Monday.
This isn’t the first time. Trump went after Massie in 2020 for throwing up a roadblock to passage of CARES Act, the first of the gazillion-dollar COVID spending bills. Indeed every two years, special interests line up primary candidates against Massie — and every time Massie knocks them down like bowling pins.
This time, however, Trump risks alienating a critical mass of his 2024 voters, says Natali Morris — co-host of the Redacted podcast.
“Let it be known,” she tweets, “that @RepThomasMassie is Peanut the Squirrel to the independents who brought the Republicans the White House and the majority. Do not bring this fight to us. No one will benefit from this.”
At least the fight is good for some quality memes…
The Worst Is Over?
At least by one metric, the worst should be over for the stock market this year.
Figures from Carson Investment Research show that going back to 2005, the average date the stock market puts in a bottom for the year is March 12 — which in 2025 was yesterday.
That’s interesting when you consider the data set includes 2008 (global financial crisis) and 2020 (COVID crash).
That said, those years weren’t the only outliers. Only three years ago in 2022 the market bottomed in mid-October. By year-end the S&P had taken a 12-month tumble of nearly 20% and many tech stocks fell even harder.
For the moment, the S&P 500 is on track to end today at a year-to-date low. At last check, it’s down a half percent to 5,566.
The Dow’s losses are narrower, the Nasdaq’s deeper. The Nasdaq sits at six-month lows.
Yesterday’s gains appear to be a one-off and not the start of something: “I did not see evidence of enthusiastic buyers stepping in on Wednesday,” says Paradigm chart hound Greg Guenthner. “Until the market proves us otherwise, I still consider this to be a relief rally, and nothing more.”
Among the big movers today, Intel is up 15% — not on an Apple takeover as James Altucher mused here on Monday, but on the appointment of a new CEO. He’s Lip-Bu Tan, who engineered a turnaround at another chipmaker, Cadence Design Systems. Tan also served on Intel’s board from 2022–2024.
The tariff threat of the day features the president proposing 200% duties on booze imports from the European Union — a level so steep that no importer would even bother bringing in such products, says one observer. “A company is not going to ship it on a 200% tariff,” Needham & Co. analyst Gerald Pascarelli tells Yahoo Finance.
For no obvious reason, precious metals are rallying strong — gold up $33, approaching record territory at $2,967 and silver at $33.46.
The rally began as soon as the Labor Department released the wholesale inflation numbers for February, which came in cooler than expected — flat month-over-month and up 3.2% year-over-year. Perhaps the thinking is that numbers like these will clear the way for the Federal Reserve to resume its rate-cutting cycle sooner rather than later.
Crude is giving up some of yesterday’s gains, down nearly 1% and barely holding onto the $67 level.
Bitcoin continues bumping around in the low-$80Ks.
Slashing the Rainforest to Stop Climate Change
Took long enough, but climate change has jumped the shark…
Yep, this year’s United Nations climate summit will take place in Belem, Brazil — a location so far-flung that it requires slashing through Amazon rainforest to build a road sufficient to accommodate the 50,000 attendees.
“Along the partially built road, lush rainforest towers on either side,” reports the BBC — “a reminder of what was once there. Logs are piled high in the cleared land which stretches more than eight miles through the rainforest into Belem.”
The state government of Para is trying to sell the project as a “sustainable highway”... but the locals aren’t buying it.
"Our harvest has already been cut down. We no longer have that income to support our family,” says Claudio Verequete — who used to harvest acaí berries on territory now occupied by the highway. He’s drawing down his savings to get by, seeing as he’s gotten zip for compensation from the government.
Right, but there will be bike lanes! And solar lighting! It’s green, dontcha see?
I mean, there’s nothing we can add. The lunacy/hypocrisy speaks for itself, and so we move on…
Mailbag: Daylight Time
Your editor’s latest rant against daylight saving time in Monday’s edition brought pushback from a reader who writes in now and then…
“Please explain to me how the sunrise at 4:30 a.m. allows me to get more sleep than a 5:30 a.m. sunrise — since you seem to agree the sunrise is the natural way to wake up, works really well for the chimps in the jungle.
“The standard time lovers talk like we still live in caves. We now have a thing called artificial light. Farmers have many of them, including me. What is good for the people in San Diego is not good for the people in Seattle. It is not one size fits all.
“DST will stay for at least eight months out of the year, if not more. This battle ended decades ago. DST won.
“And one more thing: Obesity is the No. 1 reason for heart disease and strokes, not waking up in a different time zone. I expect better research.”
Dave: Please explain to me how it makes any rational sense that the artificial light I did not need at 7:00 a.m. last week I suddenly need again at 7:00 a.m. this week.
Humans are adaptable, but they’re not that adaptable. In addition to the car crashes, heart attacks and workplace injuries that spike the week after time change, the stress of the adjustment ravages your immune system. I managed to avoid an oncoming cold this week only by firebombing my innards with liposomal vitamin C.
For visual evidence that year-round standard time is the superior solution, cartographer Andy Woodruff compiled this infographic a few years ago. (Click to enlarge.) In short, year-round standard time gives the most people the most opportunitiesfor a sensible sunrise time before 7:00 a.m.
In any event, the president is going back on his pledge for the GOP to “use its best efforts to eliminate daylight saving time.” More’s the pity…
Best regards,
Dave Gonigam
Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets
