On this final day of 2024, we bring you a special video edition to help prime your portfolio for 2025.
Welcome to your post-holiday video edition of the 5 Bullets!
As you ease into your day, you won&rsquo;t want to miss some never-before-seen content forecasting one of the biggest investment trends for 2025.
In fact, exactly two weeks ago, Paradigm&rsquo;s top minds convened in Baltimore &mdash; where trading pro and former hedge fund manager Enrique Abeyta issued a monumental New Year&rsquo;s prediction.
He posed one intriguing question: Which Mag 7 mainstay will lose over 30% in market cap?
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In fact, Enrique believes, a major tech player&rsquo;s meteoric rise might be coming to an end.
And he&rsquo;s here to outline how this company will shock investors and financial media alike as he compares this scenario to a well-known plunge during the dot-com crash.
However, Enrique remains optimistic about this tech giant&rsquo;s long-term future, suggesting its value could eventually double. Or even increase tenfold.
Click above to view Enrique&rsquo;s surprise 2025 forecast&hellip; While you enjoy a lazy day in your pajamas (if you&rsquo;re into that sorta thing).
Best regards,
Emily Clancy Paradigm Pressroom&rsquo;s 5 Bullets

Enrique-marketcap

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Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets is a daily e-letter covering the economy and the markets, reaching 120,000 paying subscribers of the renowned financial publishing firm Paradigm Press.

Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

Paradigm’s top minds convened in Baltimore — where trading pro and former hedge fund manager Enrique Abeyta issued a monumental New Year’s prediction. 


Mega-Cap Meltdown in 2025

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Tesla&rsquo;s Loss, Your Gain
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It might come as a surprise to most Americans&hellip; but global registrations for electric vehicles swelled by 20% last year, according to new figures from the consulting firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
EVs!? Who cares about those anymore?
To be sure, EVs have lost their cachet in the U.S. market. Sales flatlined in 2025. At year&rsquo;s end, Ford wrote down a $19.5 billion investment in EVs. General Motors, for its part, took a $6 billion hit. Tesla&rsquo;s domestic sales peaked in 2023.
<ul>
<li>In retrospect, the turning point for EVs in this country came right around this time in 2024: It was a huge news story when legions of Tesla owners in Chicago found themselves stranded and/or unable to charge their vehicles. Turns out batteries and chargers don&rsquo;t work very well during a cold snap. And it wasn&rsquo;t even that cold in the scheme of things &mdash; about 10 above.</li>
</ul>
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In the rest of the world, however, EVs are still hot and happening &mdash; and there&rsquo;s a lucrative investment angle that&rsquo;s not obvious on the surface.
&ldquo;Analysts from both the International Energy Agency and BloombergNEF estimate that EV sales will make up 40&ndash;50% of all vehicle sales by 2030,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s newest contributor &mdash; natural resources pro Matt Badiali. &ldquo;This industry is booming.&rdquo;
Which means battery metals are likewise booming. &ldquo;The supply/demand outlook for those metals remains strong.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;But one metal stands out as the biggest winner for investors,&rdquo; Matt tells us &mdash; &ldquo;copper.
&ldquo;Copper is the metal of electricity. Aluminum can substitute for it in some situations (like power lines). But if you want an electric motor, you have to use copper. And every EV needs electric motors.
&ldquo;In 2015, EV copper demand was 56,000 metric tons. It grew 1,650% to 1 million metric tons in 2025. That demand growth drove copper prices higher.&rdquo;
Check out this chart of the copper price going back 10 years. This week the red metal crossed over a record $6 a pound&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4VjzK3vBP2BpWoOD8YHGfF/f2fd97e04fbafa42a51877cf0d97fc07/5Bullets_ChartTemplate_0116.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Don&rsquo;t get the wrong idea: &ldquo;This trend will continue for the next five years, at least,&rdquo; Matt says.
&ldquo;The Copper Development Association forecasts copper demand for EVs to hit 2.5 million metric tons by 2030. Analysts at JP Morgan expect a deficit of 330,000 metric tons in 2026.
&ldquo;This trend will get a further boost by demand from AI datacenters. The sudden boom in electricity and batteries will further impact copper prices. There is no substitute for copper in many electrical uses.&rdquo;
As we mentioned only yesterday, Amazon has signed a deal with Rio Tinto for exclusive access to the copper coming from a mine in Arizona that came into operation last year. It&rsquo;s the first such deal &mdash; but it won&rsquo;t be the last.
How to play the trend? Matt likes the Global X Copper Miners ETF (COPX).
&ldquo;Owning a basket of these miners reduces common risks from individual companies,&rdquo; he says.
&ldquo;For most portfolios, a position in COPX is the perfect exposure to the copper market.&rdquo; [Dave&rsquo;s disclosure: I&rsquo;ve been steadily building a position in COPX since 2021.]
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Not Just Tech Anymore
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s no longer technology pulling the stock market train here in early 2026.
On the Daily Feed section of the Paradigm Press mobile app, trading pro Enrique Abeyta draws our attention to an intriguing stat from Turning Point Market Research.
Every one of the S&amp;P 500&rsquo;s 11 sectors now sits above its 200-day moving average. That&rsquo;s everything from information technology to financials to utilities.
&ldquo;Since 1928,&rdquo; Enrique says, &ldquo;the S&amp;P 500 has delivered an annualized return of 11.5% once this happens.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Another tailwind for stocks &mdash; a peaceful bond market.
Just as the VIX measures volatility in stocks, the MOVE index measures volatility in bonds. The MOVE index has been falling steadily ever since the &ldquo;Liberation Day&rdquo; scare last April.
Key point: &ldquo;When the MOVE index is high (or going higher), stocks struggle,&rdquo; Enrique says. &ldquo;When it collapses, stocks &mdash; especially small stocks &mdash; can soar.&rdquo;
The MOVE now sits at lows last seen in 2021. &ldquo;Bullish for small caps across the board.&rdquo;
Intriguing, no?
This is your friendly reminder that the Paradigm Press mobile app delivers access to market insights like these that you won&rsquo;t find anywhere else. Better yet, it gives you clean, easy-to-navigate access to all of your paid publications without sifting through a cluttered email inbox. <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/">Download the app right here and see for yourself</a>.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As the week winds down, watching the major U.S. stock indexes is like watching paint dry.
None of the averages has budged more than a tenth of a percent as we write. At 6,949 the S&amp;P 500 rests about 28 points below Monday&rsquo;s record close.
Gold has slipped below $4,600 for the moment and silver is getting a much-needed reset &mdash; down $3.62 at last check to $88.73. (More about silver momentarily&hellip;)
Not much change in crypto compared with 24 hours ago &mdash; Bitcoin just under $95,000 and Ethereum below $3,300.
The lone economic number of interest today is industrial production &mdash; up 0.4% in December, according to the Federal Reserve. All told, 76.3% of America&rsquo;s industrial capacity was in use last month &mdash; slightly better than a year earlier, but well below the long-term average.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" /> Wars and Rumors of Wars
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Oil prices are back on the rise as new rumors swirl about a U.S. attack on Iran.
When we left you yesterday, it seemed as if Donald Trump was satisfied that Iran&rsquo;s crackdown on protesters was over and he was not inclined to launch a follow-up attack to the one he launched last summer. The oil price tumbled over 4% as a consequence.
Rumors abounded that an attack was imminent on Wednesday night. The much-followed &ldquo;OSINTdefender&rdquo; account on X claimed there were possible explosions in Tehran &mdash; and then the post was deleted because &ldquo;the source appear to be a bit flimsy [sic].&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s possible an attack was called off at the last minute, for reasons still unknown.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2V384y342ARlUvejFQaRoY/a4e01c12ecd6518ceefc569962401391/FMF-Issue-01-16-26_2_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" />
But as our favorite political reporter Michael Tracey reminds us, Trump pulled a feint just before last summer&rsquo;s airstrikes&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1Tn9begpgBTNOT01VsnSWT/df9dbc7908bbb09e41f5cc18879daac3/FMF-Issue-01-16-26_3_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Amid that backdrop, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is up over 1% on the day &mdash; back within 15 cents of $60.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Discounted Silver! (For a Few Seconds&hellip;)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The action in silver this week is so wild that for a brief time, the U.S. Mint was selling it at a discount.
On Wednesday, the spot price of silver sailed toward $93 an ounce &mdash; which was problematic because the Mint was charging $91 for uncirculated U.S. Silver Eagles.
Evidently the Mint is such a slow-moving beast that rather than adjust the price higher, it simply pulled its silver offerings off its website.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5GmWzpW9XuQEkT45JPqWgG/14048555a5a53ba642679aee28e682fb/FMF-Issue-01-16-26_4_.jpg" alt="pub" width="313px" />
&ldquo;Due to rapidly rising metal costs, silver numismatic (collectible) products have been temporarily removed from sale as we evaluate pricing across our entire numismatic portfolio,&rdquo; a notice explains.
&ldquo;Products will be placed back on sale as soon as prices are adjusted. American Eagle Silver bullion coins remain available for purchase through our network of authorized purchasers.&rdquo;
Is it that hard to adjust the prices on the website? Or has the Mint&rsquo;s inventory been cleaned out?
&ldquo;The U.S. Mint has suspended silver sales before, but those suspensions were attributed to inventory shortages and supply chain disruptions, not to rising bullion prices,&rdquo; writes one Stuart Englert on his Substack page.
&ldquo;Between 2008 and 2010, extreme demand forced the U.S. Mint to ration and temporarily suspended sales of American Silver Eagles several times due to a shortage of blanks to make the bullion coins. At the time, some industry observers attributed the shortages to kinks in the supply chain or a manufacturing bottleneck.&rdquo;
Ditto in 2020 amid the pandemic disruptions.
Silver Eagles are still available at most online dealers at the usual markup. Nothing at Costco, though&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />You&rsquo;ve Got to Be Kidding&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Apparently this is how management at CBS News thinks they can revive their brand&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/zj4n4wCI6PCzDYiuKM8pQ/5d195ec3dd701e4edb67d8494761eebc/FMF-Issue-01-16-26_5_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> <img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4NsFLVUicCvDuXZwxKhd8n/5463d365c46be62c8fd7f65bcd275e6d/FMF-Issue-01-16-26_6_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> What were they thinking!? [CBS mockups posted by Zeteo News]
So we should back up a bit: Last year, CBS parent Paramount came under the control of nepo-baby David Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. The younger Ellison hired free-speech hypocrite Bari Weiss to try to make CBS News relevant again.
So far, it&rsquo;s not working.
For instance, Weiss&rsquo; interview with Charlie Kirk&rsquo;s widow Erika last month garnered a measly 72,000 views on YouTube after two days. On TV, viewership totaled about 1.5 million &mdash; a fraction of the audience that watched the Army-Navy football game beforehand.
Meanwhile, viewership of the CBS Evening News under Weiss-appointed anchor Tony Dokoupil is down 23% compared with already-pitiful levels a year ago &mdash; when Norah <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2019/07/11/noron-earns-her-big-reward-what-about-you/">&ldquo;Noron&rdquo;</a> O&rsquo;Donnell was still at the desk.
<ul>
<li>Sidebar: As you might know, your editor worked 20 years in broadcast news until walking away from the racket in 2007. The trade has become so irrelevant, so inconsequential to public discourse, that I&rsquo;d never even heard of Tony Dokoupil until maybe 18 months ago.</li>
</ul>
And so Weiss or one of her minions thought it would be a good idea to spice up the network&rsquo;s flagship newscast with a segment called &ldquo;Whiskey Fridays With Tony Dokoupil.&rdquo;
"Some staff were only first made aware of it as they encountered CBS testing set designs of a faux-stocked bar in the newsroom, featuring a large sponsor banner for Jack Daniel&rsquo;s," tweets reporter Prem Thakker of the Zeteo News site.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The humiliation was such that CBS went into instant damage-control mode: It&rsquo;s just a concept!
"This is not a segment for broadcast. This is not a real title. This is not a real sponsor. And this is not a real story,&rdquo; says a CBS statement to People magazine. &ldquo;This is simply an experimental mockup the graphics team created with placeholder text for a potential non-televised, in-person private event.&rdquo;
Uh-huh.
Having been unwittingly dragged into the fray, Jack Daniel&rsquo;s parent Brown-Forman had to issue its own statement: &ldquo;Jack Daniel&rsquo;s is not involved in any such segment, nor do we have any awareness of the segment and any potential partnerships or sponsorships.&rdquo;
As one wag on X put it, &ldquo;Amazing that even Jack Daniel&rsquo;s was like, &lsquo;Do not involve us in this dork s***.&rsquo;&rdquo;
The fiasco is especially amusing to us here at Paradigm &mdash; where for 20 years we&rsquo;ve conducted rollicking panel discussions under the name &ldquo;Whiskey Bar,&rdquo; both at in-person conferences and online.
And they&rsquo;ve gone over with audiences way better than anything out of CBS News lately&hellip;

FMF-Issue-01-16-26(Featured)

Tesla’s Loss, Your Gain

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />After 25 Years of Locked Doors, A Door Opens
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Sorry if the last three days of these 5 Bullets have been a downer &mdash; everything about how the American Dream has been locked away for more and more Americans over the last 25 years and how we got here.
Today we hope to make it up to you.
We&rsquo;re coming to you a bit later than usual because moments ago Jim Rickards wrapped up our exclusive event titled &ldquo;The American Dream Unlocked.&rdquo; <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2504902">(You can watch the replay right here if you missed it.)</a>
He introduced them to the newest member of the Paradigm team, Matt Badiali &mdash; aka &ldquo;the CEO.&rdquo;
We call him that because he was chief executive officer of a company that made a lot of its shareholders rich last year.
He took his mining company public several years ago. Then last August he brokered a deal to grow his company&rsquo;s operations &mdash; acquiring a firm called Silverco Mining. This deal unlocked a huge 608% peak gain for its shareholders in only two months.
That&rsquo;s only one achievement of many across a 20-plus year career in the mining and energy sector as an executive, analyst and consultant.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Now in 2026, Matt has spotted an opportunity that could be as lucrative as anything that came out of the natural resource boom during the 2000s.
If you don&rsquo;t recall that episode, &ldquo;it was epic,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I personally know a lot of people who simply retired after that market. They made so much money that they were set for life.&rdquo;
A mere $5,000 grubstake turned into&hellip;
<ul>
<li>$130,000 in less than five years with Southern Copper</li>
<li>$320,000 in about five years with the steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs</li>
<li>$1.1 million in less than five years with Azimut, a miner of copper, nickel and lithium.</li>
</ul>
Did you miss out on those? Well, Matt sees a similar opportunity shaping up here in the 2020s &mdash; with a little-known federal agency set to make an earthshaking move before the end of the month.
Just one announcement a few days from now could unlock the American Dream for those who are bold enough to act.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m talking about an unstoppable trend that could be the biggest wealth-creation event of the decade,&rdquo; Matt says.
If your curiosity is piqued, <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2504902">once more here&rsquo;s Jim Rickards&rsquo; introduction to Matt &mdash; and the replay to our exclusive event, &ldquo;The American Dream Unlocked.&rdquo;</a>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Gee, It Took Only Two Years
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />We&rsquo;ve been screaming from the rooftops about this story for two years &mdash; and today it finally got to the front page of The Wall Street Journal.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1mTEe7gmPsspavfuMpHxqp/28594d6eaeb2b9a494b09170889fe642/FMF-Issue-01-15-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Well, you heard it here first: &ldquo;The rapid growth in internet traffic and cloud computing has led to skyrocketing energy demands for data centers,&rdquo; said our Ray Blanco in this space on Jan. 18, 2024.
By the summer of 2024 we were calling AI &ldquo;the monster that ate the power grid.&rdquo; Last year, we gave you a rare free pick in these virtual pages &mdash; Constellation Energy (CEG) &mdash; which soared 52% in less than six months. Enrique Abeyta&rsquo;s paying subscribers fared even better.
Along the way we also told you about the problems facing the nation&rsquo;s biggest grid operator &mdash; PJM, which serves 67 million people in 13 states from the mid-Atlantic to the Midwest. Its territory includes the biggest concentration of data centers in the world, &ldquo;Data Center Alley&rdquo; in northern Virginia.
Finally the WSJ is perking up: &ldquo;Rates are going up for consumers. Older power plants are going out of service faster than new ones can be built. And the grid&rsquo;s capacity is in danger of maxing out during periods of high demand, which could force PJM to call for rolling blackouts during heat waves or deep freezes to avoid damaging grid infrastructure.&rdquo;
Again, none of this is new if you keep up with these daily missives. We even warned real-time about potential blackouts specific to PJM like a Christmas Eve cold snap in 2022. (Fortunately matters did not reach a crisis level.)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Here is the frustration of the affordability crisis in one chart,&rdquo; says Enrique Abeyta, with a follow-up today.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1ckC3j37idYK4E6mIecORH/c8136f8536114a7f2610e3b8c7044237/5Bullets_Chart_ChangeinElectricityPricesbySector_011526.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&ldquo;Residential electricity prices have risen almost +10% since 2022,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;while rates for commercial (+3%) and industrial (-2%) have gone up less or even down.&rdquo;
To be sure, not all the blame lies with AI: In some states, &ldquo;green&rdquo; mandates supporting solar and wind have also driven up power prices.
This morning brings news that the data center buildout is affecting sectors other than just technology and electricity: Amazon just signed a two-year deal for access to copper mined at an Arizona site by Rio Tinto. Last year, that mine became the first new source of U.S. copper in more than 10 years &mdash; and now Amazon&rsquo;s got dibs.
Paradigm will continue to stay on top of the story &mdash; and keep you ahead of the mainstream.
[By the way: Enrique first brought that chart to readers&rsquo; attention this morning in the &ldquo;Daily Feed&rdquo; section of the Paradigm Press mobile app.
Only the app gives you access to a host of instant insights &mdash; along with convenient one-stop-shopping for all the buy and sell alerts in your paid publications. (No more sifting through your email!) <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/">Download here</a>.]
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" /> Oil&hellip; and Iran
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The big market story today is a tumble in the oil price because peace is breaking out again in the Middle East. For the moment. Maybe.
Only two days ago, Donald Trump told anti-government protesters in Iran that &ldquo;help is on the way.&rdquo; Then last night, he seemed to reverse course &mdash; saying he&rsquo;d been told &ldquo;the killing in Iran has stopped.&rdquo;
He didn&rsquo;t say who told him, but traders are taking it as a sign that tensions are easing.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Meanwhile, an eye-opening Washington Post story puts the timeline of the last three weeks in an interesting new light.
&ldquo;Days before protests erupted in Iran in late December, Israeli officials notified the Iranian leadership via Russia that they would not launch strikes against Iran if Israel were not attacked first&hellip;
&ldquo;[T]he contacts reflected Israel&rsquo;s desire to avoid being perceived as escalating tensions toward Iran&hellip;&rdquo;
Hmmm&hellip; The article does not specify exactly when these contacts took place. But consider what else was going on around that time&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Dec. 29: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, urging Trump to attack Iran</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Dec. 29: Israel&rsquo;s overseas intelligence service, the Mossad, posts a message on social media in Iran&rsquo;s Farsi language: &ldquo;Go out together into the streets. The time has come.&rdquo; Mossad said pointedly its agents were already in the streets: &ldquo;We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Jan. 2: Israel&rsquo;s Channel 12 outlet reports that roughly half of politically active accounts on Israeli social media are bots, not real people &mdash; and much of the traffic amplifies messaging from Netanyahu. &ldquo;When he posts a five-minute video in Hebrew, in the first 60 seconds, most of the shares are from abroad, and [those] posts happen within about five seconds,&rdquo; said Jonathan Hasidim of the Scooper research group.</li>
</ul>
So Mossad is ginning up mobs in Iran while social media worldwide is flooded with posts urging Donald Trump &mdash; not Netanyahu &mdash; to attack Iran in defense of the protesters.
Brings to mind the old joke about &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s you and him fight.&rdquo;
But in recent days the anti-government protests have fizzled &mdash; presumably because the regime&rsquo;s opponents want to be seen as Iranian patriots and not tools of Israel and the United States.&nbsp;
And now Trump is signaling no U.S. airstrikes are imminent. Not that the U.S military is in a position to do much anyway: There isn&rsquo;t even a U.S. aircraft carrier in the region right now.
With that, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is down more than three bucks &mdash; sitting as we write a hair under $59.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Beyond oil, the other big market story is a whipsaw in silver.
The trouble began during electronic trading in New York last night, the price collapsing from over $93 to under $87. Then the white metal started clawing its way back. At last check it&rsquo;s back over $92!
Gold has looked positively calm by comparison &ndash; down modestly but still holding the line on $4,600.
It was a modestly positive day for the major U.S. indexes, the Dow up 0.6%. The S&amp;P and the Nasdaq both ended the day up a quarter percent &ndash; not enough to make up for yesterday&rsquo;s losses.
Crypto is looking stout &ndash; Bitcoin over $95,000 and Ethereum in sight of $3,300.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />&ldquo;Trumpcare for the Oil Industry&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Big Oil is skeptical about big money to be made in Venezuela.
Last Friday, Donald Trump met with a group of oil executives at the White House. He urged them to invest at least $100 billion in rebuilding and building out Venezuela&rsquo;s oil infrastructure.
No one stepped up with an immediate commitment &mdash; even though Venezuela sits on the world&rsquo;s biggest oil reserves and its oil is the kind that&rsquo;s tailor-made for Gulf Coast refineries. Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods called the country &ldquo;uninvestable&rdquo; because there are no &ldquo;legal and commercial frameworks.&rdquo;
Gee, it&rsquo;s almost as if Woods was urging Trump to follow through with full-on regime change; as it happens, Exxon has funded think tanks advocating exactly that.&nbsp;
"I didn't like Exxon's response,&rdquo; Trump said Sunday. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re playing too cute.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Regardless, Exxon&rsquo;s Woods merely said out loud what every other CEO in the room was thinking: What&rsquo;s the point of investing billions when leftist paramilitaries could start blowing up pipelines willy-nilly to deprive the Yanquis of Venezuelan crude?
University of Chicago poli-sci prof Robert Pape might be a little hyperbolic here&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7jnVYE9R3ln8UNNFFjIlRy/4a02e1870a6e96d901cc8fd0fcf26006/FMF-Issue-01-15-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&hellip; but then again, he&rsquo;s the world authority on suicide bombing, so his warnings shouldn&rsquo;t be dismissed out of hand.
Is it any wonder that last week Trump floated the idea of the U.S. taxpayer <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/james-altucher-back-on-the-bitcoin-train">subsidizing</a> Big Oil&rsquo;s investment in Venezuela?&nbsp;
One wag on social media likens the scheme to Obamacare for the health insurers &mdash; &ldquo;Trumpcare for the oil industry.&rdquo;
<ul>
<li>Meanwhile, Chinese firms like CNPC keep a significant presence in Venezuela &mdash; and that hasn&rsquo;t changed even with former President Nicolas Maduro sitting in a New York lockup. For whatever reason, you don&rsquo;t see much about that angle of the story in Western media&hellip;</li>
</ul>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Affordability and the American Dream
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-end-of-affordability">Tuesday&rsquo;s edition</a> resonated with readers &mdash; especially the two charts laying bare how the American Dream seems out of reach for so many.
&ldquo;I thought your Jan. 13th 5 Bullets was on point, particularly the way you anchored data to lived experience rather than official narratives. The affordability breakdown you describe is real, persistent and increasingly undeniable.
&ldquo;A challenge I continue to wrestle with regarding economic machinations is whether we sometimes mistake mechanisms for causes. The Fed, subsidies, tariffs and red tape clearly matter; outcomes, however, are remarkably consistent across administrations, parties and policy regimes. The same small group keeps winning, while most Americans keep falling behind.
&ldquo;That persistent result makes me wonder whether the deeper story is less about ideology or incompetence and more about incentive structures and ownership models that quietly shape outcomes regardless of who&rsquo;s &lsquo;in charge.&rsquo; The system keeps performing exactly as designed, despite which actor appears to be steering it.
&ldquo;I often think about this in terms of two money games: a collaborative, value-creating, making game that sustains the real economy and a competitive, zero-sum taking game that overlays and increasingly dominates it. Whether or not it&rsquo;s a frame worth naming, it&rsquo;s one I can&rsquo;t seem to unsee once the patterns are laid side by side.
&ldquo;Always appreciate the clarity of your thinking.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;It seems to me that when you view a number of charts that productivity and affordability have widened the gap since a certain date in 1971,&rdquo; writes another &mdash; &ldquo;when Nixon took us off the gold standard.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Until then, the gap between the two was quite consistent.&nbsp;
&ldquo;I'm no economist, but in viewing some of these charts it was about that time when the gap really began to widen. What is the Paradigm team's thought on this?&rdquo;
Dave responds: Well, we don&rsquo;t all think alike around here, but I think you&rsquo;re onto something &mdash; and so does the operator of <a href="https://wtfhappenedin1971.com">this website</a> &mdash; who we hasten to add has no connection with us.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Good information here, but you missed a big piece of why Americans of median income are struggling with the almighty dollar being so almighty weak today,&rdquo; writes one more.
&ldquo;Check out the Solari report on Substack. $21 trillion missing? My guess is that this would be a huge factor in the overall numbers of everything you include on your charts. $6.5 trillion in 2015 alone...
&ldquo;FRAUD is the biggest problem we have today, and have had for some time. Everyone (or most) in government at every level everywhere is on this gravy train, and it is not going to stop. Another $750 million just took off from Minnesota bound for Somalia yesterday &mdash; all cash in suitcases, and we just seem to let it happen. And Bessent says 10% of all federal money is not accounted for.
&ldquo;So what went wrong?&rdquo;
Dave: I&rsquo;m familiar with the research you reference &mdash; even wrote about it when Catherine Austin Fitts and Michigan State&rsquo;s Mark Skidmore first issued it in 2017. (And I revisited it <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/elon-vs-the-pentagon">last year</a> when the DOGE boys were supposed to be auditing the Pentagon. Remember that?)
To be clear, the $21 trillion in &ldquo;undocumented adjustments&rdquo; at the Pentagon and HUD from 1998&ndash;2015 aren&rsquo;t all fraudulent necessarily. It&rsquo;s just that there&rsquo;s no clear paper trail, such is the sloppy nature of government recordkeeping.
Anyway, I will gently disagree: There will always be &ldquo;waste, fraud and abuse&rdquo; in government. It&rsquo;s just the nature of the beast. The key is to shrink government to a size where the inevitable fraud will be a rounding error!

FMF-Issue-01-15-26(Featured)

After 25 Years of Locked Doors, a Door Opens

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Portfolio&rsquo;s Great. Why Am I So Unhappy?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The story of investing during 2025 can be summed up as the tale of Nvidia and Newmont.
Nvidia was the darling of the tech-adjacent &ldquo;Magnificent 7&rdquo;... the poster child for the AI age&hellip; the object of endless discussion on CNBC and investing message boards.
NVDA began the year around $137 and ended at $187 &mdash; a solid gain of 36.5%, more than double the performance of an S&amp;P 500 index fund.
In contrast, no one talked about Newmont Corp. NEM is the biggest gold-mining company in the world&hellip; but both Newmont and the gold-mining sector as a whole went unloved, overlooked, under the radar.
NEM began the year around $37 and ended just shy of $100 &mdash; a stunning one-year gain of 170%. And almost no one noticed.
I don&rsquo;t even remember when I started investing in the precious metals space in earnest; the easily-accessible records from my brokerage account go back only 10 years. I didn&rsquo;t do anything wild or crazy &mdash; just dollar-cost averaging into the Sprott Physical Gold Trust (PHYS), the Sprott Physical Silver Trust (PSLV) and the Tocqueville Gold Fund of mining stocks (now under the Sprott umbrella trading as SGDLX).
Through all the ups and downs &mdash; gold collapsed from $1,900 in 2011 to $1,050 in 2015 &mdash; I held fast. I had every confidence that the outperformance of precious metals during the 1970s and the 2000s would recur sooner or later.
2025 was the year my patience started to pay off, gold ending the year north of $4,300.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And I have every confidence the party&rsquo;s just getting started. Which is really depressing to think about.
Yes, depressing. On a profound level, the outperformance of the precious metals sector &mdash; and the boost it&rsquo;s given to my portfolio &mdash; gives me no joy.
The problem is that precious metals &mdash; and the natural resource space as a whole &mdash; usually outperform at a time when the world is going to hell in a handbag.
Think about the Great Depression, when &mdash; as we saw in yesterday&rsquo;s edition &mdash; the term &ldquo;American Dream&rdquo; first came into widespread use.
It was an awful time for both the economy and the stock market. But among the best performing stocks of the 1930s were two gold-mining names &mdash; Homestake Mining and Dome Mines. A dollar invested in Homestake in 1928 would have turned into $1.97 by 1932&hellip; $4.95 by year-end 1933&hellip; and $6.40 by the end of 1934.
The natural-resource sector also thrived during the 1970s &mdash; when inflation was ravaging everyday Americans and the era of post-WWII prosperity ground to a halt. (I recall encountering the term &ldquo;Rust Belt&rdquo; in U.S. News &amp; World Report way back then.)
The gold price zoomed from $35 to over $800&hellip; while individual mining names performed even better. Energy names also thrived during this time.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Like it or not, gold&rsquo;s success these days goes hand-in-hand with an American Dream that seems ever more elusive.
I&rsquo;ve been anticipating something like this for the better part of two decades. It gives me no joy that it&rsquo;s coming to pass.
Gold&rsquo;s rise in the 2020s is a global vote of no-confidence in the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasury debt.
Uncle Sam is racking up enormous budget deficits relative to the size of the economy. Politicians in decades gone by could justify deficits of that scale during a world war, a global financial crisis or a pandemic. But none of that is happening now.
It&rsquo;s no coincidence gold took off in 2022 when Washington froze the dollar-based assets of Russia&rsquo;s central bank. Governments around the world, wary it could happen to them too, have loaded up on gold as an alternative to dollars and Treasuries.
It&rsquo;s still the early innings. &ldquo;Private institutional investors have gold allocations of below 2.0% of total assets,&rdquo; Paradigm&rsquo;s Jim Rickards reminded us last month.
&ldquo;If that expanded to a mere 4.0% allocation, there&rsquo;s not enough gold in the world at today&rsquo;s prices to fill those orders.&rdquo;
And so it goes with all manner of natural resources &mdash; tangible wealth. Precious metals, base metals, energy, agriculture&hellip;
Yes, the gains to date have been fantastic. But it&rsquo;s still, at the latest, the fourth inning.
Now I&rsquo;ll hand it off to Emily for the rest of today&rsquo;s edition&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Powell Panic
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Not all breaking news matters. The latest story about Jerome Powell is a perfect example,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s pro trader Enrique Abeyta.
&ldquo;By now, you&rsquo;ve seen the headlines&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7p7pIUO3CNYfimfNJPPuuP/052df3a5371e9c7359a16c474871abdd/FMF-Issue-01-14-26_1_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Source: New York Times
&ldquo;Stocks traded lower and risk assets wobbled as commentators speculated whether this is the beginning of some grand unraveling.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;It was simply the opening of an investigation. Yet the market reacted as if the most extreme interpretation were already fact,&rdquo; Enrique points out.
&ldquo;If you zoom out and look at what actually matters right now, the disconnect becomes obvious&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Market strength has been broadening, not narrowing</li>
<li>Leadership is no longer confined to a handful of mega-cap names</li>
<li>Interest rates have been drifting lower, easing financial conditions rather than tightening them</li>
<li>Oil prices are down, which acts as a tax cut for consumers and businesses alike</li>
<li>And corporate earnings growth remains solid, with margins holding up better than most feared just a few quarters ago.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Against that backdrop, a knee-jerk sell-off tied to the announcement of an investigation [isn&rsquo;t] just overblown &mdash; it&rsquo;s absurd.
&ldquo;To prove my point, here&rsquo;s a great chart from one of my favorite financial voices, Charlie Bilello from Creative Planning. [It] highlights the market's reaction (or lack thereof) to major historical events:
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7veXqfi4nzR9OnOgEqTipe/e9d74966ff3833407e30ddfac90647e5/FMF-Issue-01-14-26_2_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Source: Creative Planning
&ldquo;Even significant events like the 2016 Brexit vote barely registered on S&amp;P total returns,&rdquo; Enrique notes.
&ldquo;If the U.K. leaving the EU after more than four decades barely impacted the S&amp;P 500's trajectory, do you really think this Powell headline will have a lasting impact?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The Powell story checks every box of a classic &lsquo;BTSD&rsquo; setup,&rdquo; Enrique adds. Unfamiliar with the acronym? Buy the Stupidity Dip&hellip;
&ldquo;None of this means volatility disappears or that you should blindly buy every dip,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Context always matters.
&ldquo;But in situations like these, where the reaction is clearly disconnected from fundamentals, the playbook is straightforward.
&ldquo;Slow down. Filter out the noise. And focus on what actually drives markets,&rdquo; Enrique advises.
&ldquo;BTSD isn&rsquo;t just a slogan; it&rsquo;s a mindset. And on occasions like these, it&rsquo;s how investors make real money.
&ldquo;Over and over again, the market sells first and asks questions later,&rdquo; he concludes. &ldquo;When cooler heads prevail, prices quietly recover.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Stocks are hitting the skids this afternoon. The Nasdaq is getting the worst of it; the tech-heavy index is down 1.45% to 23,365. Faring slightly better, the S&amp;P 500 has lost about 1% market cap to 6,895 while the Dow&rsquo;s down 0.50% to 48,935.
Meanwhile, oil&rsquo;s rebounding, up about 0.85% to $61.68 for a barrel of West Texas crude. But precious metals are in record-breaking territory. Gold&rsquo;s up 0.45% to $4,620.20 per ounce, but it&rsquo;s silver that&rsquo;s stealing all the shine: up 5.15% to $90.74.
Crypto, likewise, is rallying today. Bitcoin&rsquo;s up 3.65%, just under $98K, and Ethereum&rsquo;s up 5.35% to $3,375.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Who Pays for the AI Boom?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Trump is making affordability a frontline issue, now aiming squarely at the soaring energy costs tied to America&rsquo;s AI boom.
On Tuesday, Trump announced his administration is partnering with major tech companies to ensure the massive data centers powering artificial intelligence do not push electricity bills higher for American households.
&ldquo;We are the &lsquo;HOTTEST&rsquo; Country in the World, and Number One in AI,&rdquo; Trump wrote on Truth Social. &ldquo;Data Centers are key to that boom, and keeping Americans FREE and SECURE but, the big Technology Companies who build them must &lsquo;pay their own way.&rsquo;&rdquo;
Data centers, especially those designed for AI workloads, consume enormous amounts of electricity and water. A single large facility can use as much power as a small city and up to a million gallons of water per day. The International Energy Agency estimates that global electricity demand from data centers could double in 2026 &mdash; compared with 2022 levels &mdash; roughly equivalent to the annual electricity use of Japan.
Microsoft president Brad Smith details his company&rsquo;s commitments at a White House-area event titled Community-First AI Infrastructure. Smith says Microsoft would ensure its electricity use does not raise local utility rates and that it would forgo tax breaks or discounted power prices in communities hosting its facilities.
The announcement comes amid bipartisan backlash. Communities in states as politically diverse as Oklahoma, Tennessee, Oregon, California, New York and Wisconsin have raised alarms over higher power bills, water strain and environmental impact. In rural Wisconsin, Microsoft recently scrapped plans for a new data center after residents objected to potential electricity rate increases.
Trump has spent his second term courting tech leaders and deregulating AI development to speed innovation. But as affordability pressures mount, the White House is reassessing &mdash; pressing tech giants to absorb the costs of growth rather than passing them onto already stretched-thin American families.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />WFH = City Budget Crisis
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> America&rsquo;s remote-work experiment is no longer reshaping office culture &mdash; it&rsquo;s reshaping city balance sheets.
In a recent Demography Unplugged analysis, demographer Neil Howe and Christian Ford argue that the work-from-home shift has moved beyond workplace policy and into the realm of municipal economics.
While many white-collar employees now split time between home and office, a notable segment remains fully remote. Across U.S. metro areas with populations over 1 million, about 15% of workers now telecommute every day, with even higher concentrations in cities including Austin, Raleigh, Denver and Portland.
Notably, these workers haven&rsquo;t fled urban life altogether. They still live near restaurants, culture and amenities &mdash; but they no longer anchor downtown business districts with daily commutes. As Howe and Ford note: &ldquo;The economic impact on city centers is becoming increasingly hard to ignore.&rdquo;
The most obvious pain point is office real estate. In Austin and Denver, for instance, more than a quarter of office space now sits vacant, the highest share among major metros.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/J1XHhJ9PGUjzbDOBlmKwu/c4225db91925393397ad9975feae1b76/FMF-Issue-01-14-26_3_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Source: Moody&rsquo;s, Demography Unplugged
Those vacancies ripple outward. In San Francisco, the collapse in office demand is expected to reduce property-tax revenue between $150&ndash;200 million per year from 2023&ndash;2028.
Housing markets are also adjusting. According to Parcl Labs, more than half of homes currently listed in Austin and Denver have already reduced their initial asking prices. In Austin alone, residential property values are projected to fall by 10% in 2026 &mdash; a sign that demand has softened, compounded by higher interest rates.
City governments are now responding with austerity. Denver has eliminated city positions equal to 7.6% of its workforce. Austin has scaled back funding for emergency medical services and public parks. San Francisco&rsquo;s mayor has instructed departments to identify $400 million in budget cuts for 2026.
&ldquo;Remote work is no longer just a fight between workers and bosses,&rdquo; say Howe and Ford. It has become a stress test for urban centers &mdash; one that forces cities to shrink and rethink what a downtown economy looks like when fewer people show up for work each morning.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Proof of Life: An App for That
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The hottest new app in China does almost nothing&hellip; And that&rsquo;s precisely the point.
It&rsquo;s called Si Le Ma, which roughly translates to &ldquo;Are You Dead Yet?&rdquo; Once a day, users tap a single oversized green button. Miss two days in a row, and the app automatically emails a designated emergency contact, urging them to physically check on you.
Just basic proof of life.
&ldquo;When I looked at Maslow&rsquo;s hierarchy of needs, I saw that safety needs are deeper and apply to a much broader group of people. That felt like a good direction,&rdquo; says the app&rsquo;s Gen-Z developer Guo.
Guo and his team originally charged 1 RMB (about $0.14) for lifetime access, later raising it to 8 RMB (roughly $1.15). The app reportedly cost around $200 to build.
But the concept &mdash; part utilitarian, part gallows humor &mdash; hit hard, making Are You Dead Yet? the No. 1 paid app on China&rsquo;s Apple App Store while climbing overseas rankings without paid advertising.
Guo&rsquo;s team has since been contacted by more than 60 investors, all clambering for a stake in the parent company, Moonscape Technologies. &ldquo;We knew there would be some traction, but the scale of this completely exceeded our expectations,&rdquo; Guo notes.
The app&rsquo;s popularity reflects reality. According to China&rsquo;s 2020 national census, 25.4% of households consist of just one person, up from 14.5% in 2010. While older adults still dominate that category, more young people are living alone.
The team, however, announced this week it would rebrand the app globally as Demumu, a softer name inspired by viral plush toy Labubu. Boo! &nbsp;
Fans were underwhelmed. On the Chinese social media platform Weibo, one of the most-liked comments says: &ldquo;Baby, your previous name was the reason you went viral.&rdquo;
Indeed&hellip; Take care of yourself, and look out for your neighbors! We&rsquo;ll be back tomorrow.

FMF-Issue-01-14-26(Featured)

Portfolio’s Great. Why Am I Unhappy? 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Two Little Charts and the End of Affordability
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.&rdquo;
So wrote the historian James Truslow Adams during the Great Depression in 1931.
It&rsquo;s Adams who&rsquo;s usually credited with popularizing the term &ldquo;American Dream&rdquo; in his book The Epic of America.
&ldquo;It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.&rdquo;
In yesterday&rsquo;s edition, we explored how too many people now feel locked out from that dream &mdash; even as the media yammer about a &ldquo;strong economy.&rdquo; As it turns out, economic statistics don&rsquo;t hold up in the face of many people&rsquo;s lived experience.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> But why? What went wrong?
During the long stretch from the end of World War II until the turn of the 21st century, the American Dream still seemed attainable for all.
Everyone willing to put in an honest day&rsquo;s work was able to achieve a more prosperous life. And by and large they did, no matter the income level where they started.
&ldquo;A rising tide lifts all boats,&rdquo; as the saying goes.
But the tide started going out for many people as the calendar turned to 2000 and the dot-com bust set in.
Take a good hard look at the chart below; you can click to enlarge. It came to my attention over a decade ago thanks to Marc Faber, editor of the renowned Gloom, Boom and Doom Report.
&ldquo;If I were to look at the average family income, excluding capital gains, adjusted for inflation between 2002&ndash;2012, it is clear that 90% of these families experienced a decline in real income and another 5% experienced hardly any gains.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1pBnvbMJlitsnT4RzRXQvI/b41025f5e2809f8fc4b98c7f1ec9bd7c/FMF-Issue-01-13-26_1-Enlarged_.png" alt="Click here to learn more" width="540px" /> <a href="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/enlarged-images/FMF-Issue-01-13-26(1-Enlarged).png">[Click to enlarge]</a>
&ldquo;In fact,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;it is shocking that only 0.1% of families achieved substantial gains in real incomes. Yet I find it hard to believe that it is because of these 0.1% that the rest of the population suffered.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Instead, Faber laid the blame where it belongs &mdash; at the feet of the Federal Reserve.
&ldquo;The Fed's monetary policies have failed to boost the real incomes of most people but have had an enormously favorable impact on just 0.1%...
"In fact, I would argue that the Fed is fully responsible for the fact that 90% of U.S. families have had declining real incomes (inflation adjusted) over the last 10 years or so (as money printing raised the prices of energy, food, education, transportation, health care, insurance, etc.) and have experienced a decline in their net worth. After all, it was the Fed that repeatedly and deliberately created and continues to create bubbles, which benefit only a minority, while hurting the majority."
Yes, the chart is over a decade old. Your editor has searched high and low for something more recent. But really, do you think matters have gotten any better?
One of the economists who compiled the chart published a paper on the same general theme, updated through 2022.
His conclusion is that the upheaval wrought by the government&rsquo;s reaction to COVID made the income disparity even worse than it was before &mdash; stimmy checks notwithstanding.
From 2019&ndash;2022, the bottom 99% saw their after-inflation incomes grow by 1.0% &mdash; compared with the top 1%, who enjoyed 16.1% growth.
&ldquo;Hence,&rdquo; wrote UC-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, &ldquo;top 1% families captured 81% of total real income growth per family&rdquo; during that four-year span.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> There&rsquo;s a second chart that helps tell the rest of the story.
Since 2006 or so, economist Mark Perry from the American Enterprise Institute has published what&rsquo;s become known to his followers as the &ldquo;Chart of the Century.&rdquo;
His most recent update was only six months ago. It speaks for itself&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2WTryNvy3pxLwxWCGxmggD/efbfd628a3cae91c526588fd2df64df3/FMF-Issue-01-13-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Look at what tops the list. Health care and higher education &mdash; the two things that government has subsidized the most&hellip; mucked up the most&hellip; and made ever more inaccessible to the middle class.
Health care spending in the United States now totals nearly $15,000 per person per year &mdash; by far the highest in the world, 61% higher than No. 2 Switzerland. For those lucky enough to have insurance, premiums rise at a pace far outstripping the official inflation rate. (If you&rsquo;re a W2 employee, you probably noticed a meaningful hit to your first paycheck of the year.)
Meanwhile, the promise of higher ed &mdash; go deep into debt so you can achieve a higher standard of living than you would without the sheepskin &mdash; rings hollow to an entire generation of young adults.
And so the American Dream feels ever more out of reach: Here are the depressing results from a Wall Street Journal-NORC survey conducted last summer.
<ul>
<li>Only 25% of Americans believe they have &ldquo;a good chance of improving their standard of living&rdquo; &mdash; an all-time low in data going back to 1987</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Nearly 70% believe hard work does not translate to getting ahead &mdash; a low in 15 years of survey data</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>And most revealing&hellip; Over 75% doubt that children today will live a better life than their parents.</li>
</ul>
Is it any wonder the U.S. fertility rate has hit historic lows?
We&rsquo;ll leave it there for today. As it happens, we have inflation numbers to tackle next&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Markets Today: Inflation, Earnings, Small-Biz Sentiment
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Both earnings season and economic numbers are coming into view as we approach midmonth.
The Labor Department released the December consumer price index this morning. The official inflation rate held steady at 2.7%. The big drivers were shelter, groceries and meals out (oh, and health care); prices for gasoline fell, as did used vehicles.
As always, any relationship between the official number and your own cost of living is purely coincidental.
Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase started earnings season on a sour note. The headline numbers beat analyst expectations, but revenue from investment banking fees missed expectations badly. With that, JPM is down 2.8% on the day.
Amid those cross-currents, the S&amp;P 500 rests at 6,962 &mdash; down less than a quarter percent from yesterday&rsquo;s record close.
As for precious metals, gold is holding onto yesterday&rsquo;s gains &mdash; inching higher into record territory, now over $4,600. And silver&rsquo;s rocket ride still isn&rsquo;t over &mdash; up $3.26 as we write to $88.40.
Crypto is hanging tough, with Bitcoin at $93,577 and Ethereum at $3,189.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Small-business owners feel sanguine going into 2026 &mdash; if the Small Business Optimism Index from the National Federation of Independent Business is any indication.
The headline number for December rings in at 99.5 &mdash; up from 99.0 the month before and the highest reading in four months. It&rsquo;s also above the long-term average for this survey, which the NFIB has conducted for over 50 years.
&ldquo;While Main Street business owners remain concerned about taxes, they anticipate favorable economic conditions in 2026 due to waning cost pressures, easing labor challenges and an increase in capital investments,&rdquo; says NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg.
On the portion of the survey where owners are asked to identify their single most important problem, taxes have rocketed higher.
In the November survey, taxes were in third place &mdash; cited by 14% of respondents. But in December, taxes zoomed all the way up to No. 1, cited by 20% &mdash; the highest since May 2021. And &ldquo;quality of labor&rdquo; is still up there, with 19% saying their biggest problem is finding qualified help.
Inflation was cited by 12% and poor sales by 10%. Everything else was in single digits.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />&ldquo;I&rsquo;m From the Government and I&rsquo;m Here to Help&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The proverbial &ldquo;geopolitical tensions&rdquo; appear to be pushing oil prices over $61 for the first time in two months.
Last night, Donald Trump declared that &ldquo;Effective immediately, any Country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay a Tariff of 25% on any and all business being done with the United States of America.&rdquo;
So&hellip; the trade truce with China is off? The 50% tariff on India goes to 75%?
China is Iran&rsquo;s biggest trading partner. India is no slouch. Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are also major trade partners with Iran.
This isn&rsquo;t the first time, but it&rsquo;s now apparent that Trump tariffs are not aimed exclusively at &ldquo;leveling the playing field&rdquo; when it comes to trade, nor raising revenue for a cash-strapped federal government.
&ldquo;They are sanctions by another name,&rdquo; tweets Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> At midmorning today, Trump upped the ante &mdash; posting a message on social media addressed to protesters in Iran: &ldquo;Help is on the way.&rdquo;
And you thought the U.S. bombing of Iran&rsquo;s nuclear energy facilities last summer was a one-and-done, right?
At the end of last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid another call on the White House and Trump moved the goalposts: Iran&rsquo;s ballistic missiles became a potential casus belli.
Now it seems the issue is anti-government protests &mdash; which, according to The Jerusalem Post, are being ginned up by Mossad agents inside Iran.
Tempting as it might be to dismiss Trump&rsquo;s statements as bluster, the U.S. State Department is urging all dual U.S.-Iranian citizens to leave Iran now. &ldquo;Have a plan for departing Iran that does not rely on U.S. government help,&rdquo; says its advisory.
And we haven&rsquo;t even gotten to Venezuela yet. That&rsquo;ll have to wait till tomorrow&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Thought for the Day
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Along the lines of today&rsquo;s Bullet No. 1&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2OZS1jwZEDb0n67tJwQBjs/c58c39801093a27cef69d976d64e5e5e/FMF-Issue-01-13-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Who We Are and What We&rsquo;re All About
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Thank you for sharing information about Paradigm Press and what it entails,&rdquo; a reader writes after last week&rsquo;s &ldquo;Who We Are and What We&rsquo;re All About&rdquo; edition.
&ldquo;Although I&rsquo;ve been a long-time subscriber, it was refreshing to read. I've also subscribed to&hellip;
[Here we&rsquo;ll redact the names of several competitors&hellip;]
&ldquo;Based on my experience, Paradigm Press stands out as the best among them. The high quality of service, friendly customer support team and transparency about products are quite unique.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The 5 Bullets on your philosophy has me pondering the past five years,&rdquo; writes a reflective reader.
&ldquo;Most of my life was paycheck to paycheck. Then (age 70) I inherited enough to invest $15,000.
&ldquo;Admittedly, I am an investment advisory &lsquo;fan.&rsquo; Over five years I have spent over $35,000 on various investment services. Here is the joy of it all: By studying, the portfolio is up to $135,000.
&ldquo;Paradigm Press is my favorite right now. Why?
<ul>
<li>This national and international climate is the realm of Jim Rickards. Presidential decisions have a particularly powerful impact on the markets. Jim and the team sift through the noise and give readers the &lsquo;signal.&rsquo; It saves time, and sanity. With investing, it creates a wide perspective in time and space. [We are thinking in terms of decades, and of every nation on the planet.] Peace and plan come with perspective.</li>
</ul>
Jim always recommended gold. In this world, gold is truly &lsquo;shining.&rsquo; Gold, silver and many minerals are shining. Gold is the everything hedge.
<ul>
<li>Reliable information is rare and priceless. Elon Musk risked a lot to take a stand for free speech. Jim Rickards, and team, take that freedom and publish truth and insights. Every person who is well informed radiates a light of truth that protects the whole world. The value of truth blesses everyone on the planet: all nations and generations to come. What a joy to be a part of knowledge!</li>
</ul>
An educated populace makes &lsquo;democracy&rsquo; work!
<ul>
<li>Beyond the perspective on investment trends, and the knowledge on current events, for its own value, Paradigm Press completes a lot of research on companies. A lot of research. Some speculative plays are for a week or a month, some investments develop over years. The time frames are reasonably clear in the discussions.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Yes, 2025 was a bull year. One theme at the Nashville conference was to &lsquo;make the profits, and KEEP them.&rsquo; Investors will need to be savvy in the days ahead!
&ldquo;Another note. We give 10% to our worship community. That provides a certain detachment, and a deep enthusiasm for earning. It gives us a sober awareness of the preciousness of resources.
&ldquo;Thank you all, for all you do. You are a &lsquo;motley&rsquo; crew, presenting facets of the diamond of the investment picture. Thank you for the enthusiasm you bring to this adventure.
&ldquo;Blessings for 2026.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Thank you for your kind note.
As I said last week, we don&rsquo;t want customers &mdash; we want happy customers. Glad we can oblige &mdash; although we take nothing for granted and we know trust has to be earned anew every day.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I look forward to the 5 Bullets probably more than the subscriptions that I have!&rdquo; says another reader. &ldquo;Keep up the good work.&rdquo;
&ldquo;I love your stuff,&rdquo; says another. &ldquo;This is the only email where I learn what is truly going on in our country and the world. Thank you for your direct and honest writings!&rdquo;
Dave: Thank you, sir. However, I&rsquo;ve long warned that this e-letter is only part of a balanced informational diet!
Along those lines&hellip; it&rsquo;s getting so much harder to separate the news from the noise anymore &mdash; even for an old-school journalist like myself.
Sometime in the weeks ahead I hope to devote an entire issue to why that&rsquo;s the case &mdash; and what we can do about it to remain an informed citizenry. Stay tuned&hellip;

FMF-Issue-01-13-26(Featured)

The End of Affordability

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Locked out of the American Dream
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The financial media are flailing around &mdash; trying to make sense of the nonsensical.
Case in point: This morning&rsquo;s Wall Street Journal&hellip;
<blockquote>Call it the glass half-full market.</blockquote>
<blockquote>In recent weeks, government data has been mixed, showing disappointing job gains and robust economic growth. But U.S. investors are focusing on the positive side of things, piling into bets that suggest they have strong confidence that the economy will keep powering forward.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The Dow Jones Industrial average is off to its best start to a year since 2003&hellip;</blockquote>
As related here on Friday, the December job numbers were mediocre. Actually, most of 2025&rsquo;s job numbers were mediocre.
But at the same time, &ldquo;the economy&rdquo; as measured by gross domestic product is going gangbusters. Shortly before Christmas, the Commerce Department reported that GDP grew during the third quarter at an annualized 4.3%. And if the &ldquo;GDPNow&rdquo; figures crunched by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta are any indication, the fourth quarter was even stronger.
So what gives?
After all, you&rsquo;re probably sick and tired by now of hearing about a strong economy while you or people you know are struggling&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The problem lies in what the media and the politicians and Wall Street call &ldquo;the economy.&rdquo; It has zero relationship to what you and I think of as the American Dream &mdash; an ever-improving standard of living and the aspiration that your kids will live a better life than you.
When they talk about the economy, they mean GDP &mdash; a statistical abstraction that has nothing to do with your own prosperity.
Here&rsquo;s how preposterous GDP is &mdash; and this is an illustration spelled out years ago by Bill Bonner, the founder of Paradigm&rsquo;s parent firm: If you mow your lawn, and your neighbor mows his lawn, that has no effect on GDP. But if you pay your neighbor $40 to mow your lawn, and he pays you $40 to mow his, GDP miraculously grows by $80!
But it&rsquo;s much worse than that, as the venture capitalist Peter Thiel pointed out in 2022.
Compare American life in the 1950s, he said, with American life now. If &ldquo;you shift an economy from a single-income household with a homemaker to one with two breadwinners and a third person who&rsquo;s a child-carer,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;statistically you have three jobs instead of one and therefore you have more GDP, and you will exaggerate the amount of progress that&rsquo;s happened.&rdquo;
In other words, it took only one income back in the day to support a middle-class standard of living. Now it takes both parents, scratching and struggling. But if you&rsquo;re an egghead economist, it&rsquo;s all good because &ldquo;the economy&rdquo; as measured by GDP is bigger.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Actually, if you dig into the latest GDP report, there&rsquo;s some useful insight that the mainstream mostly overlooks. It reveals why so many people feel locked out of the American Dream.
The report dug into consumer spending habits &mdash; which on the surface, were strong.
But beneath the surface you find a huge disconnect among the top 10% of income earners and everyone else.
Demographer Neil Howe elaborated during his most recent podcast: &ldquo;You&rsquo;re talking about, at the high end, spending out of asset gains.
&ldquo;This is one way in which, among many, we see equity markets driving the economy. You know, you think it&rsquo;s supposed to be the other way around, right?... But here&rsquo;s one more case in which it&rsquo;s really, without these asset gains, you would not have the top 10% spending like that.
&ldquo;Then, the bottom end &mdash; borrowing, right? The increase in buy-now, pay-later plans. The overall savings rate declined from 5.0% to 4.2%.&rdquo;
Apart from the COVID calamity, the savings rate hasn&rsquo;t been this low since the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis.
No savings, no ability to build for the future &mdash; and no American Dream.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The American Dream of prosperity accessible to all has turned into a nightmarishly stratified society&hellip;
<ul>
<li>A top 0.1% elite that&rsquo;s amassed a greater and greater share of overall wealth during the first 25 years of this century</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The next 9.9% who can still live comfortably</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Another 40% below that top 10% who have retirement accounts and some home equity, but by and large live paycheck-to-paycheck &mdash; even if they command six-figure household incomes</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>And a bottom 50% who have no investments, no home equity &mdash; and no hope.</li>
</ul>
Now, perhaps, you have a better understanding of why &ldquo;the economy&rdquo; as defined by the Establishment can be &ldquo;strong&rdquo; &mdash; but few people are happy.
Our ethos at Paradigm Press is to empower you to move up a level from wherever you are now. It&rsquo;s still possible to overcome the blunders and deceits of the politicians and Wall Street types.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Fed Pressure and Precious Metals
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> For all the caterwauling you see in the media, nothing has fundamentally changed now that Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is in the Justice Department&rsquo;s crosshairs.
Late Friday, the DOJ delivered subpoenas to Fed headquarters at the Marriner Eccles Building in Washington.
As it happens, renovations to the Eccles building appear to be at the center of the investigation: Did Powell lie to Congress last summer when he said the renovation plans are not as lavish as reported by the New York Post?
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no VIP dining room, there&rsquo;s no new marble,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There are no special elevators. There are no new water features, there&rsquo;s no beehives and there&rsquo;s no roof terrace gardens.&rdquo;
Which, according to a subsequent Post story, &ldquo;directly contradicted the project&rsquo;s own planning documents, which were signed off on by government pen pushers in 2021 &mdash; and which haven&rsquo;t been revised since.&rdquo;
Last night, Powell issued a video statement &mdash; really, it looked like a hostage video &mdash; in which he said the subpoenas were aimed at intimidating the Fed into lowering interest rates faster than it has to date.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7sZE65DfWvy1LUvGhN1cQy/7ad3fffc418fc7f44ff36bf6f3ffa255/FMF-Issue-01-12-26_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Maybe he was blinking &ldquo;We&rsquo;re doomed, buy gold!&rdquo; in Morse code?
To hear the mainstream tell it, the stock market fell at the start of today&rsquo;s trading because of the Trump administration&rsquo;s threat to the Fed&rsquo;s &ldquo;independence.&rdquo;
We won&rsquo;t belabor the point today about how Fed independence is a myth &mdash; other than to remind you that in the 1960s President Lyndon Johnson shoved Fed chair William McChesney Martin into a wall to reinforce his wishes for lower interest rates. As far as we know, Trump hasn&rsquo;t laid a hand on Powell.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> For the stock market, Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta says this news in fact means &ldquo;absolutely nothing.&rdquo;
As he put it on the Daily Feed section of the Paradigm Press mobile app, &ldquo;With market strength broadening, rates and oil prices going lower and good earnings growth - BTSD! (My version &lsquo;Buy the Stupidity Dip&rsquo;).&rdquo;
[You don&rsquo;t have the Paradigm app? You don&rsquo;t know what you&rsquo;re missing. <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/">Download here</a>.]
And in any event, the stock market reaction was short-lived: What started as a 300-point drop in the Dow has been shaved to less than 100 at last check. That&rsquo;s not even a quarter of a percent. Meanwhile, the S&amp;P 500 and the Nasdaq are flat on the day.
The major indexes are holding up well despite a downdraft in bank stocks after Donald Trump called for a cap on credit-card interest rates of 10%. JPMorgan Chase is down 1.9% and Citi 3.5%.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The link between the Fed subpoenas and the action in precious metals is more clear. 
As our macro maven Jim Rickards tweeted, &ldquo;Gold at a new all-time high. Jay Powell under criminal investigation. First rule of intelligence analysis &mdash; there are no coincidences.&rdquo;
Powell is out the door in four more months regardless because that&rsquo;s when his term ends. But &ldquo;Trump may feel he needs Powell out longer before midterms to give the economy time to heat up,&rdquo; observes Rude Awakening editor Sean Ring. In other words, the Fed might begin mashing the monetary gas pedal sooner than expected.
With that, gold is up $110 as we write to a record $4,618. Silver is up $5.55 to a staggering $85.39. And the HUI index of mining stocks is *this* close to the 800 mark.
Elsewhere in the commodity complex, crude is flat &mdash; a little over $59. As for crypto, Bitcoin is trying to reclaim the $92,000 level while Ethereum has surpassed $3,100.
More musings about the Fed next&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Those Other Times a Fed Chair Lied&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Never mind Fed independence &mdash; how about Fed accountability?
If Jerome Powell lied to Congress, he wouldn&rsquo;t be the first Fed chair to do so.
As we&rsquo;ve chronicled in years past, Ben Bernanke &mdash; who was chair during the 2008 financial crisis &mdash; is known to have committed perjury at least twice.
<ul>
<li>Bernanke told Congress the bonds the Fed inherited in 2008 from the failure of Bear Stearns were investment-grade. Bloomberg News discovered in 2010 &mdash; only after filing a lawsuit &mdash; they were, in fact, junk</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Bernanke also told Congress in February 2010, &ldquo;We have no plans whatsoever to be involved in any foreign bailouts.&rdquo; In reality, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse topped the list of banks that dumped their crappy mortgage-backed securities on the Fed between 2007&ndash;09.</li>
</ul>
And that leaves out Bernanke&rsquo;s still-murky role in Bank of America&rsquo;s shotgun marriage with Merrill Lynch during the worst of the 2008 crisis. BofA CEO Ken Lewis failed to inform his shareholders at the time about Merrill&rsquo;s huge losses, as the law required. In 2009, Lewis said he withheld that information on orders from Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who was acting &ldquo;at the request&rdquo; of Ben Bernanke.
Seems Bernanke was lying about matters that did far more harm to everyday Americans than some posh renovations that went over budget.
But he never even got a strongly worded letter, much less the handcuffs-and-leg-irons treatment. And so it goes&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Not exactly new, but perhaps newly relevant?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7q7mRYt6FoDRWivbbTfeHI/f478ed2dc64d72d0b749d38f40856fb5/FMF-Issue-01-12-26_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Ukraine, Small Business
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Was disappointed in false information that Dave Gonigam expressed in last Tuesday&rsquo;s edition,&rdquo; a reader writes.
The reader takes exception to a brief passage about Washington meddling overseas in which your editor stated, "And that U.S. meddling is nowhere near over: Trump continues to arm Ukraine."
&ldquo;The United States is not arming Ukraine,&rdquo; the reader asserts. &ldquo;President Trump has explicitly stated many times that the USA is selling arms to NATO countries (at a profit) and THEY are choosing to provide the arms to Ukraine. President Trump has said many times publicly that we have spent enough of our money giving arms to Ukraine and will no longer continue to do so.
&ldquo;And oh, by the way, why use the word &lsquo;meddling&rsquo;? This war was inherited by President Trump. You consider us &lsquo;meddling&rsquo; in it? The president is trying to end it. (!)
&ldquo;I look forward to seeing a publicized correction. Facts matter, especially in a service such as Paradigm Press.&rdquo;
Dave responds: 
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4h1Oms01CM8aYI5p4m7ZMG/7ce4e4ffbb4090acbf3b307c989ae6fe/FMF-Issue-01-12-26_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
"We're going to send some more weapons,&rdquo; Trump himself said the day of that statement. &ldquo;We have to."
And it&rsquo;s not just &ldquo;defensive.&rdquo; Who honestly believes that Kyiv could have launched nearly 100 drones on one of Vladimir Putin&rsquo;s homes at the end of 2025 without knowledge and coordination from Washington?
Unless and until Trump announces he&rsquo;s washing his hands of the whole affair, yes, he&rsquo;s meddling.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> On the subject of the Chicago Bears&rsquo; attempt to squeeze out special favors from taxpayers for a new stadium, a reader brings up &ldquo;the evil not mentioned.
&ldquo;The big/large companies can negotiate for special treatment, often motivated by business-unfriendly policies in the given city/state or move to another state.
&ldquo;What went unsaid is that the many small businesses have to labor under the business-unfriendly nature of their locations, thus propping up the legitimacy of a local bad business environment.&rdquo;
Dave: Good point. Small business has been getting the shaft over and over in recent years &mdash; starting with lockdown in 2020, when small retailers had to close their doors while Walmart, Target and Costco stayed open.
Nobody noticed because it was Christmas Day, but The Wall Street Journal published a worthwhile story about how for small businesses, &ldquo;years of high inflation, increasingly cautious consumers and tariffs are weighing on earnings and prompting cutbacks. Over the past six months, private firms with fewer than 50 workers have steadily shed jobs, according to payroll processor ADP, cutting 120,000 in November alone. Midsize and, especially, large firms have continued to add jobs.&rdquo;
Indeed the article points out how the divide between big and small businesses is fueling the divide between high- and low-income Americans.
&ldquo;Workers at small businesses tend to earn less than those at large companies. And the increases in stock-market wealth stemming from the rally in shares of large, public companies accrue mostly to the rich.&rdquo;
And so we end where we began today: It&rsquo;s not a robust economy driving stock market gains. It&rsquo;s stock market gains propping up the economy, as more and more people feel locked out of the American Dream.
We&rsquo;ll dig deeper into the theme tomorrow&hellip;

FMF-Issue-01-12-26(Featured)

Locked out of the American Dream

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />&ldquo;The Next Starlink&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Amazon is quietly building the next Starlink,&rdquo; writes Paradigm editor Davis Wilson. &ldquo;And the best part? The market is completely missing it.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s the kind of insight you only get when you&rsquo;re on the ground &mdash; while CES 2026 is still unfolding &mdash; not weeks later when the headlines have already moved on.
For several days now, Davis Wilson of sister e-letter The Million Mission has been navigating the chaos of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, deliberately looking past the spectacle to find ideas investors will still be talking about years from now.
Amazon, Davis reports, didn&rsquo;t bother with a traditional CES booth this year.
Instead, the company rented out a private conference room &mdash; a deliberate move that kept the real story off the showroom floor and away from casual passersby.
Inside were familiar Amazon products: updated Kindles, new Ring doorbells, even an AI wearable assistant.
And then, off to the side &mdash; almost hiding in plain sight &mdash; was the most important thing in the room.
Leo.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2DUdToP88z5ekZqpnIMevs/0573173e73e0baf96b111fcd4d50aa03/FMF-Issue-010926_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Photo courtesy: Davis Wilson
&ldquo;Leo is Amazon&rsquo;s low-Earth orbit satellite network,&rdquo; Davis explains, &ldquo;its answer to SpaceX&rsquo;s Starlink.&rdquo;
Rather than relying on cell towers or buried fiber, &ldquo;Leo beams broadband directly from space to homes, businesses, ships, aircraft and remote regions.&rdquo;
The implication is massive. Connectivity stops being a local utility and becomes a global subscription service.
What surprised Davis most wasn&rsquo;t the ambition &mdash; it was the progress.
<ul>
<li>Amazon already has 175 satellites in orbit</li>
<li>80 launches are scheduled for 2026, each capable of carrying 25&ndash;35 satellites</li>
<li>The end goal: a 3,000-satellite constellation.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Put that together and it&rsquo;s clear Amazon is approaching meaningful global coverage much sooner than most investors realize.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Yet Leo receives almost no attention,&rdquo; Davis notes, even though &ldquo;the market already understands how valuable this type of business can be.
&ldquo;Just look at SpaceX.&rdquo;
Rockets may grab headlines, but analysts agree that Starlink is the profit engine &mdash; a recurring-revenue business with software-like margins once the infrastructure is in place.
It&rsquo;s why SpaceX is rumored to be considering an IPO as early as 2026, &ldquo;at a valuation as high as $1.5 trillion,&rdquo; Davis points out.
&ldquo;But when it comes to Amazon?&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;Leo gets no such credit.
&ldquo;It is not meaningfully reflected in Amazon&rsquo;s valuation. It is barely discussed. Most investors don&rsquo;t even know it exists!&rdquo;
After seeing Leo up close at CES, Davis&rsquo; takeaway: &ldquo;Amazon is exactly the kind of stock I want to own long term &mdash; while the market looks the other way.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The OpenAI Scare
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As promised on Wednesday, we&rsquo;re back with four more of pro trader Enrique Abeyta&rsquo;s 2026 insights, and he starts with a shift few investors are prepared for: After years of dominance, Enrique believes the &ldquo;Magnificent Seven&rdquo; are nearing an inflection point.
The group of tech stocks jumped about 75% in 2023, gained around 60% in 2024 and still posted returns above 20% in 2025. But last year was the first time the cracks showed &mdash; with about half of the group trailing the S&amp;P 500&rsquo;s ~17% gain.
&ldquo;I think 2026 will be the first year in a long time these stocks underperform as a group,&rdquo; Enrique says. The pressure point, in his view, is the pace of AI spending.
&ldquo;At some point in 2026, I think OpenAI will run into difficulties getting the financing for its trillion-dollar buildout.&rdquo; When that happens, he expects a sharp pullback across AI-related stocks.
But that doesn&rsquo;t mean the AI cycle is over. &ldquo;AI is much bigger than OpenAI,&rdquo; Enrique says. As spending slows, many large tech companies could see cash flow improve as capital expenditures level off.&nbsp;
By year-end, he expects the OpenAI-driven sell-off to keep Mag 7 from leading the market, despite several individual big tech names still setting up well.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> On interest rates, Enrique argues the environment shifts in 2026. Inflation and long-term yields have been easing, and he expects the Federal Reserve to respond more forcefully.
&ldquo;We could see 100bp&ndash;150bps cuts in the next 18 months,&rdquo; driven by softer employment, political pressure and market instability tied to AI.
That backdrop points to a choppier market, he says, but not a lower one.
Enrique expects earnings growth and lower rates to push stocks higher by year-end 2026, even if the ride is rough. The midyear catalyst may resemble an &ldquo;OpenAI-pocalypse,&rdquo; replacing last year&rsquo;s tariff scare.
He closes with a call on crypto. After missing the mark in 2025 &mdash; &ldquo;It was the only 2025 stock market prediction that I got wrong,&rdquo; he says &mdash; Enrique still expects Bitcoin to reach $250,000 in 2026, driven by lower rates, rising liquidity and renewed risk appetite.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The U.S. labor market ended 2025 with a whimper. 
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employers added 50,000 jobs in December, falling short of expectations for 70,000. Even so, the unemployment rate slipped to 4.4%, slightly better than the 4.5% economists forecasted.
The disconnect reflects what many economists now describe as a &ldquo;Great Freeze&rdquo; in the job market. Hiring has slowed markedly, but large-scale layoffs, the usual signal of a deeper downturn, have yet to appear.
Notably, December&rsquo;s job growth was well below the 150,000&ndash;200,000 jobs per month typically needed to keep pace with population growth, suggesting labor-market slack continues to build beneath the surface.
That slack shows most clearly in underemployment. Over the course of 2025, the number of Americans working part-time for economic reasons rose by nearly 1 million compared with 2024. By December, 5.3 million people were stuck working part-time, not by choice, but because hours were cut or full-time jobs weren&rsquo;t available.
Taken together, the December report points to a labor market that&rsquo;s still cooling &mdash; not yet freezing &mdash; heading into 2026.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Looking at futures this morning, all three major U.S. stock indexes are waking up on the right side of the bed. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is up 0.40% to 25,800 while the Dow and S&amp;P 500 are both up around 0.30% to 49,645 and 6,985 respectively.
As for commodities, oil&rsquo;s up 0.85% to $58.23 for a barrel of West Texas crude. And precious metals are hitting the ground running. Gold&rsquo;s up 0.70% to $4,494.10 per ounce, and silver&rsquo;s up 4.15% to $78.32.
The crypto market, on the other hand, is sinking into red. Bitcoin&rsquo;s down 0.55% to $90,220; Ethereum&rsquo;s down 0.60% to $3,075.
Of course, everything is subject to change if the Supreme Court tariff ruling comes out today. We promise follow-up coverage on Monday.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Trump Targets &ldquo;Dark Landlords&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It began in the wreckage of the 2007&ndash;09 housing bust. Millions of foreclosed single-family homes landed on the federal government&rsquo;s balance sheet. In 2012, Washington quietly decided it didn&rsquo;t want to be a landlord.
Under a program known as REO-to-Rental, the government sold large bundles of foreclosed homes at steep discounts &mdash; but only to buyers who could deploy enormous amounts of capital at once.
If you were a hedge fund or private-equity shop willing to write a billion-dollar check, you were welcome. If you were a small investor hoping to buy the empty house down the block, you weren&rsquo;t.
The result was predictable. Firms like Blackstone amassed tens of thousands of homes, concentrated especially in fast-growing Sun Belt markets, and turned them into rental empires.
Once the easy money was made, many of those portfolios were spun into publicly traded REITs, including Invitation Homes (INVH). Wall Street had discovered a new asset class: single-family homes as yield instruments.
That model thrived in the years after 2020 when home prices surged and mortgage rates locked would-be buyers out of the market. But even then, cracks were visible.
As Paradigm&rsquo;s value investor Zach Scheidt noted last year, higher rates don&rsquo;t last forever. When rates fall, pent-up housing demand tends to reappear &mdash; and renters try to become owners. That dynamic threatens occupancy rates and pricing power for single-family rental giants.
Now the politics are catching up&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> This week, President Donald Trump said he would move to ban large corporate investors from buying single-family homes, arguing that homeownership has drifted out of reach for younger Americans.
&ldquo;People live in homes, not corporations,&rdquo; Trump said on social media, adding that he would 1) press Congress to put the proposal into law and 2) expand on it at Davos later this month.
The reaction was immediate. On Wednesday, shares of Blackstone fell more than 5%. Invitation Homes dropped roughly 6%. Builders FirstSource slid as well.
Skepticism followed just as quickly. Some economists caution that banning the biggest players may simply open the door to smaller and midsized investors, not first-time buyers.
Additionally, institutional investors own a very small share of all single-family homes nationally &mdash; about 0.5%, according to Blackstone&rsquo;s own figures.
But when looking only at the rental segment of single-family homes, institutional ownership rises to around 4%, per Urban Institute data.
Still, the symbolism matters. No sitting president has singled out large institutional buyers of single-family homes as a central policy problem
For years, these <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c73MVMVB7mI">&ldquo;dark landlords&rdquo;</a> &mdash; as our managing editor Dave Gonigam calls them &mdash; have been an uncomfortable footnote to the housing crisis, tolerated and then normalized.
Trump&rsquo;s proposal signals that patience for this arrangement may finally be running out. Whether it changes prices? Debatable.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The Fate of Venezuela&rsquo;s Gold
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> About 31 tonnes of Venezuelan gold have been held at the Bank of England since the 1980s, part of the long-standing practice of storing national reserves in London, one of the world&rsquo;s major bullion hubs.
Since 2018, however, Venezuela has been blocked from reclaiming it &mdash; and the dispute over who controls the gold has only grown more complex.
The standoff started after Venezuela&rsquo;s contested 2018 presidential election. Western governments, including the U.K. and the U.S., refused to recognize Nicol&aacute;s Maduro as the country&rsquo;s legitimate leader.
When Caracas later requested the return of its gold, the Bank of England declined. Bloomberg reported at the time that U.S. officials had encouraged their U.K. counterparts to help cut Maduro off from overseas assets.
That stalemate sparked some creative &mdash; and risky &mdash; workarounds. In 2019, Venezuelan officials entertained a back-channel plan pitched by a U.K. national who said he represented a Swiss firm and could persuade English officials to release the gold for a discounted sale through European banks.
The plan collapsed when the intermediary disappeared, leaving behind false contact details &mdash; a vivid illustration of how isolated and cash-strapped the Venezuelan government had become.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> By 2020, the fight had moved to the London courts. Venezuela sued to recover the gold &mdash; valued in court filings at roughly $1.95 billion &mdash; arguing it was needed for pandemic relief. 
At the same time, opposition leader Juan Guaid&oacute;, recognized by the U.S. and U.K. as acting president, asserted his own claim to the reserves. Legal gridlock followed.
Now, The Guardian reports the case has taken on new urgency after Maduro&rsquo;s detention by U.S. authorities. While former vice president and current acting president Delcy Rodr&iacute;guez once denounced the gold freeze as &ldquo;blatant piracy,&rdquo; her tone has recently, heh, softened.
Still, Venezuela is unlikely to want its gold stranded indefinitely, especially in light of Russia&rsquo;s sanctioned central-bank assets, frozen since 2022.
With Venezuela&rsquo;s political future uncertain and foreign courts split over legitimacy, the bullion remains in limbo &mdash; locked in London vaults.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />The Peacock&rsquo;s Put out to Pasture
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> CNBC has officially lost its peacock. 
On Dec. 13, 2025, the network quietly rolled out its new logo, the result of NBCUniversal&rsquo;s corporate shell game that spun CNBC into a new entity called Versant. The name stays. The bird does not.
The replacement logo, with a fused N and B, is a nod to CNBC&rsquo;s original 1989 logo:
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5narR9NjQ44vaiNJ8m0EGI/01b188dffd62873837dc520a19838687/FMF-Issue-010926_2_.png" alt="pub" width="247px" />
After&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6JkmLkRYmuojzGcUirq7nx/bf94ebc04a6cd6aaa1eb41e3a610489c/FMF-Issue-010926_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Anonymous designer: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure everyone involved was simply relieved to call it done.&rdquo;
If this seems familiar, last year MSNBC got its own makeover into MS NOW. Different network, same minimalist logo drained of all personality.
And if Cracker Barrel is any indication, when legacy brands shed their familiar graphics, it&rsquo;s usually not just a design change. It&rsquo;s a complete vibe shift.
Happy Friday, reader! Watch your inbox for Saturday&rsquo;s recap issue. Take care&hellip;

FMF-Issue-010926(Featured)

CES 2026: Amazon Intel

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />A Sun-Seeker Visits Vegas
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas isn&rsquo;t just about the flashiest gadgets. It&rsquo;s where early prototypes sit next to finished products and where you occasionally stumble onto something that feels slightly ahead of its time.
That&rsquo;s exactly the feeling surrounding one of the more subtly ambitious debuts at CES 2026: the Solar Mars Bot from Silicon Valley-based company Jackery.
Jackery is already well known to CES regulars. For more than a decade, it has built a reputation in portable energy, off-grid power and home backup solutions.
This year, Jackery showed off plenty of familiar hardware, from new portable power stations to an eye-catching solar gazebo designed to turn outdoor space into a living room or home office.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But the solar product that&rsquo;s drawing attention at this year&rsquo;s CES isn&rsquo;t fixed in place. Instead, it roams. 
Mounted on wheels and paired with auto-retractable 300-watt solar panels, the solar bot can navigate autonomously, reposition itself during the day and adjust its angle to capture more sunlight.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3llo4wO3bS2rNGg9kBx4Xc/4fa894e0bf6d61418f9398c27ff8eca1/fmf_tweet.png" alt="tweet" width="450px" />
When charging is done, the panels fold back in, making the whole system surprisingly compact for what it does. According to Jackery, the Mars Bot uses AI-enhanced computer vision to avoid obstacles and optimize its placement throughout the day.
The platform can travel at speeds up to 5.9 feet per second, handle modest terrain and tilt its panels up to 60 degrees to improve solar capture as conditions change.
Power is stored in modular LiFePO4 batteries, each rated at 2 kilowatt-hours, with total capacity designed to scale while supporting AC, DC and USB outputs.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The idea is simple: Panels capture optimal solar energy, store power onboard and deliver it wherever electricity is needed. The use cases Jackery highlights range from outdoor recreation to emergency or rescue scenarios.
There&rsquo;s also a more forward-looking thread running through the pitch, potentially powering portable satellite internet, future AI systems and personal robotics &mdash; situations where mobile, self-sustaining energy matters as much as raw capacity.
The Solar Mars Bot first appeared as a concept at CES 2024. Seeing it return in 2026 as a working product says something about the next generation of energy capture. Instead of bigger panels or heavier batteries, this is about mobility and autonomy that actively seeks out sunlight rather than passively waiting for it.
CES has always been at its best when it shows how familiar problems can be solved in novel ways. A robot that wanders around looking for sunlight? Feels right at home in Las Vegas or even in your own backyard.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />&ldquo;Prediction Season Is in Full Swing&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the first full trading week of 2026, and prediction season is in full swing,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s pro trader Enrique Abeyta.
&ldquo;To kick off the new year, I want to share some of my surprise predictions for the next 12 months,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Like stock picking, predictions are all about probability. There are no guarantees.
&ldquo;What I&rsquo;m presenting here are some out-of-consensus views that I think aren&rsquo;t just possible &mdash; they&rsquo;re probable. Outcomes that, if they happen, are going to surprise a lot of folks.
&ldquo;And I don&rsquo;t want you to be caught off guard,&rdquo; Enrique says. &ldquo;So here we go!&rdquo;
Small Caps Finally Outperform
&ldquo;In the long term, I&rsquo;m not a fan of small-cap stocks,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re subscale companies with inferior balance sheets and more exposure to variables like inflation, interest rates and commodities.
&ldquo;But right now, they have undemanding valuations. Look at this chart showing the valuation of the midcap stocks over the last few decades&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7Dll8pgzK4LJ84awNl5M9V/360aff89f410bf01350990db9a5452ca/fmf_chart.png" alt="Chart" />
&ldquo;Valuations are back down to relative levels last seen in the late 1990s,&rdquo; Enrique points out.
&ldquo;Back then, we saw a rotation into technology leaders (think today&rsquo;s Mag 7), causing increased multiples in those stocks and lower multiples in everything else.
&ldquo;With an acceleration in non-AI economic growth and lower interest rates, I think the setup for smaller stocks is superb,&rdquo; he says.
&ldquo;Remember that in 2000, the S&amp;P 500 was down 9% and the Nasdaq was down 40%. But the Russell 2000 was only down 4%, while the equal-weight S&amp;P 500 was up 12%.
&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t think the major indexes will be down as much as they were in 2000,&rdquo; Enrique says. &ldquo;But the outperformance of smaller stocks could be just as much.&rdquo;
On Friday, we&rsquo;ll be back with four additional 2026 insights from Enrique &mdash; predictions investors won&rsquo;t want to miss.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The S&amp;P 500 and DJIA hit new intraday highs today, extending their strong start to 2026. But the rally appears to be stalling&hellip; 
The Dow&rsquo;s now pulled back 180 points to 49,280; at the same time, the S&amp;P 500 is still in the green &mdash; up 0.10% to 6,950. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, on the other hand, is up 0.45% to 23,650.
As for commodities, Venezuela will ship sanctioned oil to the U.S. on an ongoing basis, according to White House sources. The president says the initial tranche will total 30&ndash;50 million barrels, sold at market price &mdash; with deliveries expected to continue indefinitely. Proceeds will be held in U.S.-controlled accounts and released at Washington&rsquo;s discretion.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright confirmed the arrangement today, saying the U.S. will market both stored Venezuelan crude and future production. Oil that previously flowed largely to China will now be rerouted directly to U.S. ports.
The price of crude, at the time of writing, is down 1.30% to $56.38 for a barrel of WTI. According to CNBC taking data from Reuters: &ldquo;Oil prices slip as traders react to expected increased supply from Venezuela.&rdquo; Huh. But Valero Energy (VLO) shares are up 4.15%.
Precious metals? Gold and silver are both in the red: down 0.55% (to $4,469.70 per ounce) and 3.90% (to $77.90) respectively. More on silver in a moment.
Finally, the crypto market is likewise in the red; Bitcoin&rsquo;s pulled back 1.30% to $91,385 while Ethereum&rsquo;s lost 2.45% to $3,160.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Existing Mines Beat Blueprints
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Precious metal miners have done very well over the past year. But today I&rsquo;m going to show why silver miners in particular have much further to run,&rdquo; says The Daily Reckoning editor Adam Sharp.
In 2025, gold rose about 70%, but silver did even better, jumping over 150%. At first glance, it might seem logical to assume mining profits rose by similar percentages.
But as Adam explains, mining profits don&rsquo;t rise in a straight line with metal prices. That&rsquo;s because most mining costs are relatively fixed. Once those costs are covered, each additional dollar increase in the price of silver flows disproportionately to the bottom line.
Adam points to Pan American Silver (PAAS) as a clear, real-world example. The company publishes its all-in sustaining cost (AISC), a widely followed metric that captures the cost to produce each ounce of metal.
In Q1 2024, Pan American&rsquo;s AISC for silver was about $16.68 per ounce, while its realized silver price averaged $22.61. That left a margin of about $6 per ounce.
Fast-forward to Q3 2025 and the picture changes dramatically. Average silver prices climbed to around $39 per ounce, while costs edged slightly lower. Profit per ounce rose to around $23 &mdash; nearly four times the margin from early 2024.
And that&rsquo;s before considering higher price scenarios. &ldquo;If silver stays around the current $80 level and their costs stay around $16 per ounce, the profit per ounce will rise to a crazy $64,&rdquo; Adam says. &ldquo;So from Q1 2024 to Q1 2026, many silver miners&rsquo; profitability per ounce has increased by a ridiculous 10X.&rdquo;
Margins are one thing. Volume is another. &ldquo;In Q3 2025, PAAS produced around 5.5 million ounces of silver. If they maintain that production in this current quarter&rdquo; &mdash; at current prices &mdash; &ldquo;the company could earn about $352 million in three months, from silver alone,&rdquo; says Adam.
But silver isn&rsquo;t the company&rsquo;s only revenue stream. In the same quarter, Pan American produced about 183,000 ounces of gold, at an AISC near $1,697 per ounce, adding another powerful profit driver.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;That is a very long way of saying that silver (and gold) miners are absolutely printing money in this environment,&rdquo; Adam emphasizes.
Why is this an unusually favorable setup? Mining is energy-intensive. Diesel and gasoline can account for up to 15% of operating costs. That makes today&rsquo;s sub-$60 oil environment a meaningful tailwind.
Adam says this setup may rival &mdash; or even exceed &mdash; past bull markets. &ldquo;I would argue this is one of the all-time great environments for miners.&rdquo;
Established miners have a clear advantage. Unlike explorers and developers, they already operate permitted, long-life mines. New projects, by contrast, still face years &mdash; often decades &mdash; of regulatory reviews, financing and construction before they ever produce an ounce, especially outside the U.S.
Adam&rsquo;s takeaway: &ldquo;I want to primarily invest in the companies making a killing today,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Not ones that have a long road of capital raises and permitting ahead of them.
&ldquo;Hopefully this [helps] explain why despite huge gains over the past year, I haven&rsquo;t sold a single silver miner,&rdquo; he concludes. &ldquo;And I have no plans to anytime soon.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Davos Stops Dissembling
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />There&rsquo;s something almost reassuring about Davos in January. Like clockwork, the world&rsquo;s power trippers and control freaks gather in the picturesque Swiss ski town.
But in January 2024, our managing editor Dave Gonigam noticed <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/davos-welcomes-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">something unusual at the World Economic Forum.</a> Amid performative panic over &ldquo;misinformation&rdquo; and hypothetical pandemics, a few heavyweight figures in finance did something that wasn&rsquo;t supposed to happen: They acknowledged Donald Trump might not be the cartoon villain of Davos&rsquo; imagination.
Trump wasn&rsquo;t exactly embraced. Just&hellip; quietly acknowledged. JPMorgan&rsquo;s CEO Jamie Dimon, for instance, who spent most of his professional life orbiting Democratic politics, admitted that Trump had been &ldquo;kind of right&rdquo; on NATO, immigration, trade and China. Not a love letter; just a balance-sheet observation.
At the time, it felt faintly subversive. (Maybe even a slip of the tongue chalked up to altitude sickness?) After all, Davos is a place where acceptable opinions are carefully curated.
Now, Microsoft, crypto company Ripple and management consulting firm McKinsey have each agreed to pay up to $1 million to sponsor &ldquo;USA House,&rdquo; a Davos venue that will serve as a base for U.S. government officials during President Trump&rsquo;s visit later this month. (JPMorgan Chase has also been approached to participate, though the bank has not publicly confirmed whether it will sign on.)
The venue itself is a small 19th-century church just outside the forum&rsquo;s official security perimeter &mdash; which somehow feels like a metaphor.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5Gw0DicozusaaFL3KHjfbq/7c1c60c771fb6a727eb766f11d97fc3d/fmf_headline.png" alt="Headline" width="350px" />
Courtesy: X
To be clear, Davos has always had its unofficial &ldquo;house&rdquo; system. Countries and corporations convert shops and hotels into networking hubs every January.
What&rsquo;s different this year is that U.S. companies are no longer quietly hedging. They&rsquo;re openly positioning themselves around power brokers in Trump&rsquo;s political orbit &mdash; a shift that sits neatly alongside the WEF&rsquo;s 2026 theme: &ldquo;A Spirit of Dialogue.&rdquo;
And they&rsquo;re doing it in the most Davos way possible: discreetly, at a premium price, while pretending it was always part of the plan.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />James Altucher: Right on the Money
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Bull&rsquo;s-eye&hellip; James Altucher was right on target with this one! Zing! Spot-on!&rdquo; writes an enthusiastic contributor about our New Year&rsquo;s Day 5 Bullets edition, featuring five of James&rsquo; 2026 predictions.
I&rsquo;m signing off for the day&hellip; Take care, reader!

fmf hero 010726

Can Robots Get a Suntan? 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Altucher: Back on the Bitcoin Train
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Wait, what?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3EfPtQoU6SHk9mRgPqBTwg/c257f5a3b14893821be5aea4e398f263/FMF-Issue-010626_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
From the Reuters newswire: &ldquo;The United States may subsidize oil companies to enable them to rebuild Venezuela's energy infrastructure, President Donald Trump said in an interview with NBC News on Monday.&rdquo;
Trump told NBC that reviving the Venezuelan oil industry will require &ldquo;a lot of money.
&ldquo;A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they&rsquo;ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Well, I guess that answers the question we were pondering yesterday: What incentive do U.S. oil firms have to sink prodigious amounts of capital into rebuilding Venezuela&rsquo;s oil industry when oil prices sit near five-year lows?
I confess to a lack of imagination. My limited mind did not allow for the possibility that the administration might resort to soaking the U.S. taxpayer &mdash; handing their hard-earned dollars to Exxon, Chevron et al.
And so, on further reflection, I take back what I said yesterday &mdash; about how investing in post-Maduro Venezuela would be like investing in post-Saddam Iraq in 2003 or post-Gaddafi Libya in 2011.
There will be plenty of moneymaking opportunities coming out of this regime-change op &mdash; even if Venezuela sinks into chaos, with leftist paramilitaries sabotaging the pipelines to ensure the Yanquis are deprived of the country&rsquo;s oil wealth.
Yesterday, our James Altucher convened an urgent &ldquo;all-hands&rdquo; strategy session with his analysts to discuss the post-Maduro landscape. Out of respect for his paying subscribers, I won&rsquo;t say too much about the recommendations that came out of this livestream&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &hellip;but I can reveal this much: Venezuela has put James back on the Bitcoin train.
If you&rsquo;ve been with us for a while, you&rsquo;ll recall James sold all his Bitcoin in early 2022 &mdash; having first recommended it in 2013 at a mere $114.
His rationale for selling? &ldquo;When I make an investment, the one thing I want to make sure of is managing my risk,&rdquo; he said at the time. &ldquo;With crypto now, I need to see it being used by people [because] it makes their lives better. But nobody really needs to use Bitcoin&hellip;&rdquo;
In other words, he saw more potential in Ethereum and a select few alt-coins that are actually used to conduct commerce. Bitcoin, in contrast, was evolving into digital gold &mdash; a reserve asset that you accumulate as a hedge against geopolitical or societal or currency turmoil.
Which is exactly what Venezuela is experiencing now, right?
&ldquo;When countries go through moments like this,&rdquo; says James this week, &ldquo;people don&rsquo;t wait around to see what happens to their currency or their savings. They move into assets that sit outside the system.
&ldquo;When a local currency fails, people don't wait for a new government&mdash; they move to the only asset the state can&rsquo;t seize or inflate.
&ldquo;This could be a large adoption event, and one more catalyst for mass crypto adoption.&rdquo;
<a id="2"></a>
To be sure, the crypto space enjoyed a big pop after Maduro&rsquo;s capture on Saturday &mdash; and those gains are sticking more than 72 hours later, with Bitcoin approaching $94,000 and Ethereum a shade below $3,300.
More insight from James follows immediately&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Hyundai&rsquo;s Humanoid Robot
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The big highlight so far this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas fulfills a prediction James Altucher made in this space on New Year&rsquo;s Day&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/30Nkny4XFTRtJjkgGNOV3P/7c85e0c290affda5b8357d0185cc6da2/FMF-Issue-010626_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&ldquo;Hyundai Motor Group says it will roll out human-like robots in its factories from 2028,&rdquo; reports the BBC, &ldquo;as major companies race to use the new technology.&rdquo;
The company&rsquo;s robot, named Atlas, showed its stuff on the convention floor yesterday &mdash; including the capacity to lift 110 pounds. Hyundai says it &ldquo;plans to integrate Atlas across its global network.&rdquo;
Time was that James Altucher wasn&rsquo;t sold on humanoid robots. Then it dawned on him, as he explained in our New Year&rsquo;s Day special edition: &ldquo;The entire world has been constructed to fit 8,000,000,000 5&rsquo;8&rdquo;, two-armed, two-legged humans.
&ldquo;If you want a robot that can vacuum, make a bed, cook, pack goods, stack shelves, move objects down hallways, climb stairs, open doors and work inside spaces already optimized for people&hellip; you don&rsquo;t redesign the world.
&ldquo;You redesign the worker. That worker is humanoid.&rdquo;
James points out there were fewer than 1,000 humanoid robots worldwide in 2023 &mdash; a number that grew to 25,000 by last year.
He expects that number to swell to 100,000 this year&hellip; and a million next year. Critical mass.
&ldquo;Humanoid robots solve a problem governments, corporations and societies cannot solve any other way,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;And that&rsquo;s before we account for use cases we haven&rsquo;t even imagined yet.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The Floor Under Silver
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Silver is back within sight of $80 an ounce &mdash; with two big drivers behind it here in early January.
On New Year&rsquo;s Day, the Chinese government implemented a new export-licensing scheme for silver.
&ldquo;That means 60&ndash;70% of the globally traded refined supply will require Beijing&rsquo;s permission to leave the country,&rdquo; writes money manager Charlie Garcia. China needs that silver to build out its solar-panel and electric-vehicle capacity.
And it&rsquo;s not as if the rest of the world can wave a magic wand to spin up new production.
Garcia reminds us there&rsquo;s very little &ldquo;primary&rdquo; silver mining. Most silver production is a byproduct from gold mining, copper mining and so on. &ldquo;This means you can&rsquo;t just &lsquo;mine more silver&rsquo; because silver prices went up,&rdquo; Garcia writes for MarketWatch. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d have to mine more copper first.&rdquo;
Meanwhile&hellip; Bloomberg will steadily recalibrate its Bloomberg Commodity Index starting on Thursday and continuing into next week. Because silver soared 147% during 2025, its weight in the index will rise from 4% to around 9%. There&rsquo;s a lot of institutional money tied to this index, and it is moving into silver ahead of this shift.
Yes, both of these developments are known quantities and have been for weeks. They&rsquo;re not anything actionable. But they do have the effect of keeping a floor under the silver price.
Even the most pessimistic observers we follow think the floor on silver is now $50 &mdash; which we&rsquo;ll remind you is where silver was trading only three months ago before this furious rally.
Checking our screens, silver is now back over $80 for the first time since last week &mdash; up $3.73 today alone.
And gold is up $29 to $4,477 &mdash; the highest since a steep sell-off a week ago Monday.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s going to be a nail-biter, but today might be the day the S&amp;P 500 sets a record close.
The last one came at the end of the abbreviated Christmas Eve trading session &mdash; 6,932. At last check, the index rests at 6,933 &mdash; up a half-percent on the day. The Dow is also firmly in the green at 49,179 &mdash; on track to top yesterday&rsquo;s record. The Nasdaq is also staging a modest rally, but it has work to do before exceeding its late-October highs.
The Venezuela-fueled burst of enthusiasm for energy stocks we saw in yesterday&rsquo;s trading is cooling off: Chevron is down nearly 3%, Exxon down 1.2% and the XLE ETF down 1.4%.
Crude, meanwhile, is little changed at $58.15.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Wow, and people call me a cynic&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/DzwgnlQRvEUcXuKxqV91w/588995ca19a4e1e773dbf31f40ce8bc4/FMF-Issue-010626_3_.png.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" />
And speaking of Venezuela&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Venezuela, Kimmel
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;A most excellent single-issue piece you did there on that boneheaded gangsta move on Venezuela. Spot-on!!&rdquo; a longtime reader writes after yesterday&rsquo;s edition.
&ldquo;You and I have been around long enough to know that funny things can and will happen on the way to the forum. In other words, look out for the myriad of unintended consequences.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I thought this was an investment publication not let&rsquo;s-kick-Trump&rsquo;s-ass publication,&rdquo; counters a critic.
&ldquo;Yes, oil is important and several oil companies are owed billions of dollars by Venezuela and this has been adjudicated.&rdquo;
Another critical email, more measured: &ldquo;The idea of ousting Maduro wasn't just a Trump idea. Biden thought about it but didn't have the control of his administration or the backbone.
&ldquo;Ousting Maduro seems to be because of a myriad of reasons, probably even more deeper than you even know. The players including China, Russia, Iran/Hezbollah at least. It has to be agreed that these players in our backyard have to be corrected!
&ldquo;The USA has been involved in so many conflicts far away. It's about time we keep our hemisphere safe from these bad actors.&rdquo;
Dave responds: To the first point, American companies do business overseas and get hosed by foreign governments all the time. It&rsquo;s a risk that comes with the territory of operating in countries where the rule of law isn&rsquo;t followed in the way you and I typically think of it.
Do you seriously propose that U.S. special forces be deployed every time some tinhorn dictator gives the shaft to a Fortune 500 company?
Meanwhile&hellip; to whatever extent China, Russia and Iran are meddling in the Western Hemisphere, it&rsquo;s a response to many decades of U.S. meddling in those nations&rsquo; backyards.
And that U.S. meddling is nowhere near over: Trump continues to arm Ukraine. He&rsquo;s threatening once more to bomb Iran. He continues to station nearly 80,000 troops in Japan and South Korea that China sees as a direct threat. (There is no remotely comparable Chinese presence on our doorstep.)
One more thought&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3KPOzHLBIRGKeyJQqORqVM/b2fa932380003dbe23eae1795554da7b/FMF-Issue-010626_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Great article, Dave. I struggle with the freedom of speech/censorship debate. In the end, I just want the truth! I can handle the truth!&rdquo; a reader writes after we <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/mafia-tactics-fcc-vs-dis">revisited</a> the Jimmy Kimmel kerfuffle over the holidays.
&ldquo;Maybe we shouldn&rsquo;t have censorship and strong-arm tactics as both the Republicans and Democrats have demonstrated they&rsquo;re not afraid to use, but there may be a better way to do this:
<ul>
<li>Require news outlets to double-source with names in published reports</li>
<li>Eliminate anonymous sources as a means to establish legitimacy for whatever is in the article. If a news outlet won&rsquo;t subject themselves to those two requirements, then they have become an opinion outlet and a banner should run above them with the following quote during their broadcast: &lsquo;This segment does not follow proper journalistic practices and should be considered opinion and LIKELY UNTRUE&rsquo;</li>
<li>If something that is reported and double-sourced is not true, the Justice Department can go after the sources and not the news outlet.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Maybe that will clean up the disinformation and propaganda being sold as truthful news.&rdquo;
Dave: In effect, you&rsquo;re proposing every news outlet register with the feds &mdash; and that they&rsquo;d be licensed to practice their trade.
Your intentions are noble &mdash; but you&rsquo;re putting even more power in the hands of Washington, D.C. bureaucrats than they already have!

FMF-Issue-010626(Featured)

James Altucher: Back on the Bitcoin Train

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />It Was Never About Drugs
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Gee what was the title of our Nov. 18 edition?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7jisCiWvsqCObI1sLN0MS8/f2aa19548d7f69bc6c11366858167318/fmf_headline.jpg" alt="5 Bullets Headline" />
And there was Donald Trump on Saturday, saying as much as he read from a prepared statement: &ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to have our very large United States oil companies&hellip; go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ll come back to the &ldquo;making money&rdquo; thought shortly &mdash; seeing as that&rsquo;s our stock in trade.
But do note that when the deposed Venezuelan President Nicol&aacute;s Maduro goes to court in New York today, there won&rsquo;t be one word about fentanyl &mdash; because that word shows up nowhere in the 25-page indictment. (On the other hand, Maduro is charged with possessing machine guns in his own country &mdash; which somehow runs afoul of the 1934 National Firearms Act?!)
Also note Trump&rsquo;s pardon late last year of the former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez. Hernandez was doing 45 years for&hellip; drug trafficking.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Conventional wisdom has it that the story is already over. Reality check: It&rsquo;s just beginning.
The president who for years derided nation-building projects now says Washington will &ldquo;run the country&rdquo; of Venezuela &ldquo;for the time being.&rdquo;
&ldquo;For the time being,&rdquo; Trump has thrown Maduro&rsquo;s opposition under the bus, knowing it has little public support, figuring he stands a better chance of stabilizing the situation with&hellip; Maduro&rsquo;s vice president?!
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7ArNTOJEv8eRld1OI0OkV4/13fff2951c031c5e5b104bd8d546dd34/fmf_wsj_headline.jpg" alt="WSJ Headline" />
Hmmm&hellip; Vice President Delcy Rodr&iacute;guez&rsquo;s father was tortured to death by a pro-Washington regime in 1976, when she was 6 years old. As far as she&rsquo;s concerned, she says Maduro is still the rightful president.
Again, the story is just beginning &mdash; victory laps you see on social media notwithstanding.
Which brings us to the investment implications&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />About That Oil Bounty&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Talking about investment prospects in post-Maduro Venezuela is as premature as it was with post-Saddam Iraq in 2003 or post-Gaddafi Libya in 2011.
Not that reality has dawned yet on Mr. Market this morning: The oil field services stocks like Schlumberger (SLB) and Halliburton (HAL) are both up over 6%.
But how likely is it, really, that &ldquo;our very large United States oil companies&rdquo; are poised to sweep into Venezuela and exploit the world&rsquo;s biggest oil reserves after years of neglect under Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Ch&aacute;vez? And even if they do, how quickly would those reserves come into production?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Oil is not water you just turn on from a faucet,&rdquo; tweets an anonymous hedge fund portfolio manager.
&ldquo;Look at the oil patches in the U.S. and Canada &mdash; these are world-class assets with the best infrastructure, labor and capital inflow on the planet. Go out there just once and see for yourself how oil is actually discovered, drilled and transported.
&ldquo;Even in these top-tier jurisdictions, things don&rsquo;t move that fast. And yet, you think infrastructure and networks that have been rotting for decades under underinvestment, neglect and corruption can just be restored overnight?&rdquo;
That takes a massive infusion of capital &mdash; which is hard for the industry to justify when oil is trading near five-year lows.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />And that&rsquo;s assuming Venezuela does not descend into Iraq- or Libya-level chaos.
The Venezuelan-American journalist Jos&eacute; Ni&ntilde;o foresees a worst-case scenario &mdash; &ldquo;a multifactional civil war among heavily armed irregular forces, refugee flows dwarfing the current crisis and a protracted insurgency that could justify further U.S. intervention and spiral into a broader conflict that could attract irregular leftist forces from across the region.&rdquo;
Trump refuses to rule out &ldquo;boots on the ground&rdquo; to impose Washington&rsquo;s will on a country that&rsquo;s more than twice the land area of Iraq &mdash; featuring everything from Andean mountains to Amazon jungle.
&ldquo;This geographic complexity creates countless opportunities for asymmetric warfare,&rdquo; Ni&ntilde;o wrote last fall &mdash; &ldquo;with mountainous terrain favoring defensive operations, urban centers ideal for guerrilla resistance and jungle regions providing sanctuary for irregular forces&hellip;
&ldquo;It should be stressed that Venezuela&rsquo;s official military doctrine has been explicitly designed around asymmetric warfare against a hypothetical U.S. invasion since the Ch&aacute;vez era. The strategy assumes initial conventional defeat followed by sustained guerrilla resistance &mdash; making occupation costly and politically unsustainable.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />And if Trump decides not to play ball with Acting President Rodr&iacute;guez after all? 
That seems quite likely, by the way: &ldquo;If she doesn&rsquo;t do what&rsquo;s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,&rdquo; Trump told The Atlantic yesterday.
&ldquo;The Venezuelan opposition itself is deeply divided,&rdquo; Ni&ntilde;o writes.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Mar&iacute;a Corina Machado gets all the headlines, begging for American-engineered regime change &mdash; but she doesn&rsquo;t speak for all of Maudro&rsquo;s rivals.
&ldquo;Most people who want a military solution and a U.S. invasion do not live in Venezuela,&rdquo; says Henrique Capriles &mdash; who lost an election to Maduro in 2013 and has stayed in Venezuela throughout. &ldquo;They don&rsquo;t even understand the consequences of it,&rdquo; he told the BBC last summer.
He added pointedly to The New York Times, &ldquo;Name one successful case in the last few years of a successful U.S. military intervention.&rdquo;
A U.S. war game conducted during the first Trump administration concluded that U.S. intervention would result in &ldquo;chaos for a sustained period of time with no possibility of ending it,&rdquo; national security consultant Douglas Farah wrote in a report to Pentagon officials.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The Rush to Gold
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The financial consequences of regime change in Venezuela extend far beyond energy.
A group of 17 former U.S. intelligence professionals wrote an open letter to Donald Trump in November, warning that &ldquo;U.S. &lsquo;maximum-pressure&rsquo; policies and saber-rattling in the Caribbean make us look like bullies throughout Latin America if not the world &mdash; a hegemon desperate to show it can act ruthlessly and with impunity in what it considers its backyard.&rdquo;
And now that Maduro is in the dock?
A handful of financial professionals on X compare the present moment to Joe Biden&rsquo;s decision four years ago to freeze the dollar-based assets of Russia&rsquo;s central bank.
As we&rsquo;ve hammered away in this space ever since, that one move prompted every government on less-than-friendly terms with Washington to wonder, Are we next?
One more time, a chart we can&rsquo;t share often enough &mdash; showing how central bank accumulation of gold soared since 2022. (The 2025 figures are through the end of the third quarter.)
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5pVBWUP9xWBa2I7OBGOZfF/2ea7a665fbba825ebdb335b1579844c2/5Bullets_Chart_110525.png" alt="Chart" />
&ldquo;If the freezing of Russian assets in 2022 was the crack in the foundation of global finance, the capture of Nicol&aacute;s Maduro in Operation Absolute Resolve is the sledgehammer,&rdquo; says one observer. &ldquo;When money isn&rsquo;t safe, countries accelerate de-dollarization and diversify into hard assets like gold and Bitcoin that exist outside the &lsquo;clutch&rsquo; of any single jurisdiction.&rdquo;
U.S. regime change in Venezuela, &ldquo;will be remembered in history for reasons most inside the West will have no understanding or comprehension of,&rdquo; says the provocative Sirius Report account on X &mdash; which also invokes the Russian asset freeze. &ldquo;Meanwhile the Global South will have finally had any lasting shred of doubt removed.&rdquo;
One more&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3dTRgLvIG6ukxSqjCV8B0g/d9c6b702af78ef38a80c4b7e9fe92831/fmf_singh_tweet.jpg" alt="Tweet" />
Is it any coincidence gold is up $111 at last check to $4,441? Or that silver is up nearly four bucks to $76.59? Or that Bitcoin sits at a seven-week high near $94,000?
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Reaping the Whirlwind: China, Iran&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Only hours before the U.S. operation to capture Maduro, he was meeting with a high-level delegation from China &mdash; led by President Xi Jinping&rsquo;s special envoy to Latin America.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6yhKAz89jVTgu4tdpfaWTl/352e7a837ad5de7d8f35b0ebc1c3c27d/fmf_brics_tweet.jpg" alt="Tweet" />
As you might expect, Beijing does not look kindly on the regime-change op &mdash; the Chinese foreign ministry condemning the &ldquo;U.S.&rsquo; blatant use of force against a sovereign state and action against its president.&rdquo;
Important point: Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. blockade on sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela is still in place.
Last week, the shipping trade publication Lloyd&rsquo;s List reported that a Chinese-flagged oil tanker, the Thousand Sunny, is on its way to Venezuela to load a shipment of crude. At present its position is about halfway between Africa and South America, which puts it on track for a mid-January arrival.
Context: China has become the biggest buyer of Venezuelan oil by far. It doesn&rsquo;t particularly need Venezuelan crude; Beijing is simply propping up Maduro&rsquo;s government.
Further context: As I noted in 5 Bullets last month, a Russian vessel delivering oil-processing chemicals to Venezuela arrived at its destination without challenge. Moscow would have surely viewed an attempted boarding/seizure by U.S. forces as an act of war. No doubt Beijing sees things the same way.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But if regime change in Venezuela doesn&rsquo;t bring on a U.S.-China confrontation, it might clear the way for a renewed conflict in the Middle East.
&ldquo;I believe the true objective of the kidnapping operation to remove Maduro is to secure U.S. control of Venezuelan oil in anticipation of a disruption of the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf when Israel, with U.S. backing, launches a new attack on Iran,&rdquo; writes former CIA officer Larry Johnson on his blog.
&ldquo;I suppose you could say that Trump&rsquo;s Monday [Dec. 29] meeting with Netanyahu, which coincided with the eruption of protests in Iran that were likely incited by the MEK &mdash; a terrorist group with direct ties to the CIA and Mossad &mdash; followed by the kidnapping of Maduro and his wife is just a happy series of coincidences&hellip; I don&rsquo;t believe in coincidence.&rdquo;
Already top Israeli politicians like former prime minister Yair Lapid are saying, &ldquo;The regime in Iran should pay close attention to what is happening in Venezuela.&rdquo;
As mentioned earlier, it&rsquo;s highly unlikely Venezuelan oil production will be stepped up to any meaningful degree anytime soon &mdash; certainly not on Israel&rsquo;s timetable.
So don&rsquo;t rule out the possibility of a major disruption to Middle East oil supplies this spring or summer &mdash; with no Venezuelan production to make up for it.
On that note, let&rsquo;s tie up some loose ends&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Loose Ends
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The oil market is sniffing out no major changes as a consequence of the Venezuelan regime-change op.
At last check, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is up a little less than a buck to $58.20. In other words, no new major constraints to supply&hellip; but also no immediate flood of new oil to the market.
As for the stock market, the major averages are all solidly in the green, with the Dow leading the way &mdash; up nearly 1.5% and over 49,000 for the first time. That makes sense, given the higher concentration of energy stocks in the Dow compared with the other major indexes and the knee-jerk reaction to the Venezuela news.
XLE, the big energy ETF, is up 2.4% as we write. Chevron (CVX), with existing operations in Venezuela that have been subject to on-again, off-again U.S. restrictions, is up over 5%. Exxon (XOM), which has spent years funding think tanks advocating for regime change in Venezuela, is up 2.5%.
The S&amp;P 500 and the Nasdaq are both up a little less than 1% &mdash; neither in record territory, although the S&amp;P is close.
We mentioned the huge rally in precious metals earlier. Copper, meanwhile, is in record territory, over $13,000 a ton.
The one economic number of note is the ISM manufacturing index &mdash; down from 48.2 in November to 47.9 in December. That&rsquo;s weaker than expected.
Any number below 50 suggests a shrinking factory sector and except for two months early last year, the index has registered sub-50 readings consistently for three years.
We&rsquo;ll leave it there for today. We&rsquo;ll tackle more diverse subject matter and catch up on the mailbag tomorrow.
P.S. If memory serves, this might be only the third time I&rsquo;ve devoted the entirety of an issue (more or less) to breaking news.
I daresay the first two have held up pretty well &mdash; the attempt on Donald Trump&rsquo;s life <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-madness-is-just-beginning" target="_blank" rel="noopener">18 months ago</a> and the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6 <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2021/01/07/a-riot-by-another-name/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">five years ago</a>. Only one big flub in retrospect; there were definitely law enforcement who allowed protesters into the U.S. Capitol.
More tomorrow&hellip;

fmf hero 010526

Venezuela Was NEVER About Drugs

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Mafia Tactics
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Democrat or Republican, we cannot have the government arbitrating truth or opinion,&rdquo; said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at a hearing ten days ago.
This truth should be self-evident.
Even Ted Cruz can understand it and he&rsquo;s not the sharpest knife in the drawer (as Tucker Carlson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smemFVe0l5E" target="_blank" rel="noopener">demonstrated conclusively</a> last summer).
Cruz was addressing Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission &ndash; and spearhead of the Trump administration&rsquo;s approach to the media industry.
It was Carr who strong-armed Walt Disney Co. (DIS) in September to suspend ABC&rsquo;s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for some asinine remarks about the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Disney wound up reinstating Kimmel less than a week later &ndash; but along the way Carr&rsquo;s pressure tactics affected the fortunes of DIS as well as three other publicly-traded companies.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Cruz is hardly alone in his stance. In fact, the guy who made Rush Limbaugh&rsquo;s career possible thinks the Trump-Carr media policy is &ldquo;a disgrace.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ll introduce you to him in a bit, but first&hellip;
Ponder the pivot from the Biden years &ndash; when conservatives understood it was a bad thing for government to browbeat business owners and silence speech it doesn&rsquo;t like.
Conservatives like, well, FCC commissioner Brendan Carr.
In 2021, Democrats were pressuring cable, satellite and streaming providers to drop Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network from their platforms. Carr correctly labeled the effort &ldquo;a chilling transgression of the free speech rights that every media outlet in this country enjoys.&rdquo;
In addition, Carr rightly rejected the usual big-government notions of the FCC&rsquo;s role. &ldquo;The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the &lsquo;public interest.&rsquo;&rdquo;
[I put that one in bold for a reason. Stand by...]
Last year, he reiterated his pro-First Amendment stance, denouncing a Democratic proposal he said &ldquo;would empower the FCC to operate as the nation&rsquo;s speech police.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But when Donald Trump elevated Carr to FCC chair at the start of this year, Carr grabbed his badge and billy club &mdash; and got to work right away.
Few people outside government or media really noticed his heavy-handed enforcement tactics until September. That&rsquo;s when Carr undeniably pressured Disney to muzzle Kimmel.
&ldquo;We can do this the easy way or the hard way,&rdquo; Carr told podcaster Benny Johnson. &ldquo;These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there&rsquo;s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.&rdquo;
The following day he told CNBC, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re reinvigorating the FCC&rsquo;s enforcement of the public interest, and I think that&rsquo;s a good thing.&rdquo;
[You can&rsquo;t make this stuff up&hellip;]
The pressure was every bit as in-your-face as when the Biden administration <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/supreme-cowards" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sent threatening emails to Big Tech companies</a>, bullying them to take down users&rsquo; posts about COVID: &ldquo;Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on having it removed ASAP.&rdquo;
The only difference is that Carr was exerting his mafia tactics out in the open. As Sen. Cruz said on his own podcast, &ldquo;That&rsquo;s right out of a mafioso going into a bar, and going: &lsquo;Nice bar you have here, it would be a shame if something happened to it!&rsquo;&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/53TY7QqOAWQ7rUM3E8LAf6/440a4b84b9cab674b907561913aabe68/BrendanCarr.png" alt="Carr" />
Brendan Carr: FCC chair, aspiring mafia don&hellip;
Key point: Disney needs FCC approval for a previously-announced deal between its ESPN unit and the NFL; the NFL would take a 10% equity stake in ESPN while ESPN would acquire NFL Network and other NFL media assets.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Writing on the Wall
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Disney might have stood up to Carr&rsquo;s threats were it not for the ancillary threat to two much smaller companies ABC relies on.
Even before ABC suspended Kimmel&rsquo;s show, Carr&rsquo;s remarks prompted local station owners Nexstar Media Group (NXST) and Sinclair Inc. (SBGI) to pull Kimmel from their ABC affiliates. Together, Nexstar and Sinclair are how ABC reaches nearly a quarter of the U.S. population.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1dW6v9uWRUDtIHZJwgM0nb/67bae8f2a48bee59ea6e5da10efd7cf9/Map-TV-Stations.png" alt="Map" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Do not underestimate the intimidation factor for Nexstar in particular.
Nexstar hopes to pull off an unprecedented acquisition in the broadcast biz &mdash; and needs FCC approval before it can happen.
Less than a month before Kimmel&rsquo;s comments about Charlie Kirk, NXST announced plans to buy rival Tegna Inc. (TGNA) for $6.2 billion. Nexstar&rsquo;s share price zoomed 14% higher in the days before the announcement, as buzz surrounding the deal swept through the financial media.
If approved, the takeover would result in a level of consolidation never before seen in local TV.
For instance, Nexstar would own both the NBC and CBS affiliates in Tampa. It would own both the NBC and Fox affiliates in Denver. And in Indianapolis, the combined firm would control the NBC, CBS and Fox affiliates.
In a splintered media age, when broadcast television commands a fraction of the audience it did a generation ago, there&rsquo;s no plausible argument against a Nexstar-Tegna tie-up. Still, the FCC will have to rewrite current regulations or issue a waiver for the deal to go through.
Now does it make sense why Nexstar was so quick to pull Kimmel from its ABC stations?
"The decision to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! was made unilaterally by the senior executive team at Nexstar,&rdquo; a company flack told Communications Daily at the time &mdash; &ldquo;and they had no communication with the FCC or any government agency prior to making that decision.&rdquo;
They didn&rsquo;t have to. They saw the writing on the wall.
➢ Sinclair&rsquo;s case is different. Sinclair has always been a partisan animal. In 2004, ABC&rsquo;s 11:35 p.m. Eastern timeslot was still occupied by the news program Nightline. Sinclair&rsquo;s ABC affiliates preempted it one night when anchor Ted Koppel read aloud the names of the 721 U.S. troops killed in Iraq up to that point. Sinclair management said the broadcast seemed &ldquo;designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq." But even the warmongering Sen. John McCain thought Sinclair&rsquo;s posturing did &ldquo;a grave disservice to the public.&rdquo;
No, I haven&rsquo;t forgotten about the Limbaugh angle. Read on&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Reagan&rsquo;s FCC Chief: Carr Is &ldquo;a Disgrace&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />About the guy who made Rush Limbaugh&rsquo;s career possible: He was Ronald Reagan&rsquo;s FCC chair, Mark Fowler.
It was at Fowler&rsquo;s behest that the FCC did away with the &ldquo;Fairness Doctrine&rdquo; &mdash; and opened the way for a new, freewheeling era in talk radio.
Introduced in 1949, the Fairness Doctrine required the licensees of radio and TV stations to &ldquo;afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of conflicting views on matters of public importance.&rdquo;
Sounds sensible, right? In reality, however, &ldquo;It gave politicians and pressure groups a tool to harass any station that transmitted views they found disagreeable,&rdquo; recalled Jesse Walker, writing in The American Conservative in 2007. &ldquo;Even when it wasn&rsquo;t being deliberately deployed to suppress speech, it made broadcasters less willing to present ideas that might be controversial.&rdquo;
Fowler believed the Fairness Doctrine flew in the face of the First Amendment. On Aug. 4, 1987, the FCC unanimously abolished it.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6yntD8OSxzWgvdmJQM8Oo/02305e906b4a23322b308370723fb764/C-Span.png" alt="Fowler" />
Free speech champion: Fowler justifying abolition of the Fairness Doctrine to Congress in 1987
The rest is history.
"It is no accident that Limbaugh&rsquo;s show did not receive national syndication until a few months after the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine,&rdquo; broadcast historian Paul Matzko wrote for the Cato Institute after Limbaugh&rsquo;s death in 2021.
Limbaugh himself frequently credited abolition of the Fairness Doctrine with aiding his rise to stardom. And whenever Democrats talked about reviving it, he called such attempts &ldquo;the Hush Rush Law.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Fowler is still around &mdash; he turned 84 in October. What does he say about Brendan Carr&rsquo;s censorship regime?
&ldquo;I know Brendan Carr well enough to know that he knows better. This is exceedingly disappointing&hellip; They&rsquo;re trying to undo everything President Reagan did.&rdquo; Fowler told the trade publication Variety this summer.
And this was before the Kimmel imbroglio.
At the time, Carr was helping Trump engage in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/good-for-wall-street-bad-for-main-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">his successful shakedown of CBS</a>. Trump had sued the network on the grounds that the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris last year amounted to &ldquo;consumer fraud.&rdquo;
Under ordinary circumstances, the suit would have been laughed out of court. But at the time, CBS parent Paramount Global needed FCC approval to merge with Skydance Media. As such, Paramount settled for $16 million and Carr&rsquo;s FCC gave the merger its blessing days later.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;It looks like it&rsquo;s corrupt &mdash; and I say that as a Trump donor and supporter&hellip; The law doesn&rsquo;t seem to matter,&rdquo; Fowler said of the CBS case. &ldquo;It feels a bit like the wheels are coming off.&rdquo;
Of Carr&rsquo;s conduct in the Kimmel situation, Fowler is even more scathing. &ldquo;First of all, his views on the First Amendment are totally wrong, and the worst is, he knows it,&rdquo; he tells Communications Daily. &ldquo;If you look back two or three years, he sang quite a different tune, fully First Amendment first.
&ldquo;His approach now is that freedom of speech is ensured by government oversight, really trampling the First Amendment rights of broadcasters for which President Reagan fought so long and hard.
&ldquo;To me, it's personal as well as legal and public policywise. And he is a disgrace. What he is saying, no other Republican chairman, in my view, and even Democratic chairman, has ever said.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Who Decides?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Fowler &ndash; as well as Sen. Cruz &ndash; gets to the heart of the issue: Government has no role as the arbiter of truth.
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who shone a bright light on the Biden administration&rsquo;s censorship regime, put it this way in 2023: &ldquo;The authors of the Constitution understood that giving anyone the authority to decide questions of fact would create incentives for censorship, especially since government offices tend to be occupied by people with strong political beliefs.&rdquo;
But too many conservatives, traumatized by Charlie Kirk&rsquo;s murder, seem ready to ditch the principles they held dear as recently as last year. Fowler, they might say, is a fuddy-duddy out of step.
It&rsquo;s time, they say, for gloves off and scorched earth.
&ldquo;Under normal times, in normal circumstances, I tend to think that the First Amendment should always be sort of the ultimate right,&rdquo; said Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) in September. &ldquo;And that there should be almost no checks and balances on it.
&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t feel that way anymore,&rdquo; she told the Semafor news site.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Stuff like this makes your editor sick to his stomach. 
I broke into the TV news biz during the same summer of 1987 as the Fairness Doctrine was rescinded. I&rsquo;ve spent literally every working day of my adult life exercising the right to freedom of the press &mdash; a right bestowed by the Creator and secured by the First Amendment. That&rsquo;s 20 years in broadcast news, 18 years and counting in financial publishing.
The First Amendment is how the Paradigm editors can speak freely to you. They tip you off to investments they think could change your life. They warn you off investments they think could ruin your life. They do so without fear or favor.
Most important of all, newsletter editors traffic in ideas outside the mainstream. We were the original &ldquo;alternative media.&rdquo; A century ago, people thought Roger Babson was nuts for warning that the Roaring &rsquo;20s would end in tears. But in the end, he was right.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Turnabout Is NOT Fair Play
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />If American conservatives can&rsquo;t see the dangers of gloves-off and scorched earth, the acerbic Australian media critic Caitlin Johnstone does.
Her response on X last fall to the &ldquo;Turnabout is fair play!&rdquo; stance&hellip;
<blockquote>That only sounds like a cool argument if you believe the two-party puppet show is real.</blockquote>
<blockquote>In reality you're both lining up to give more and more of your power to the empire which remains in power regardless of who won the last election. They surrender some, you surrender some more, repeat.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Obviously American liberals should have known they were opening themselves up to return fire with their support for censorship when they were in power. Obviously they should not have done that, and people like me told them this the entire time.</blockquote>
<blockquote>That doesn't change the fact that you're handing the nonpartisan oppression machine more power that you will never get back every time you throw your support behind retaliatory acts of speech suppression.</blockquote>
<blockquote>You think you're hurting the libs, but you're just hurting yourself. You're just making your society more tyrannical and dystopian in ways that will inevitably affect you. You're clapping along with the two-handed puppet show like a toddler while your real oppressor picks your pockets.&rdquo; [Emphasis mine]</blockquote>
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />And there&rsquo;s nothing new about this dynamic. The late, great George Carlin saw it way back in 1992.
From his Jammin&rsquo; in New York appearance: &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all you ever hear about in this country, is our differences. That&rsquo;s all the media and the politicians are ever talking about: the things that separate us, things that make us different from one another.
&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the way the ruling class operates in any society: They try to divide the rest of the people; they keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the rich, can run off with all the ****ing money. Fairly simple thing&hellip; happens to work.
&ldquo;You know, anything different, that&rsquo;s what they&rsquo;re gonna talk about: race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality, anything they can do to keep us fighting with each other so that they can keep going to the bank.&rdquo;
Or as a meme this year put it even more succinctly&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6n1JLJUkShrNWUweDFM09j/d9ebacea395fdc83f8a652bd37cb9153/Comic-9-25.png" alt="Meme" />