The Crypto Veep
One and ¼ Cheers for J.D. Vance
The early read on Trump’s VP nominee from here: A mixed bag on the economy, very bad for world peace, pretty darn good for crypto.
For Trump’s campaign, a real plus is that it doesn’t require changing the signage too much…
Fair warning: Portions of today’s 5 Bullets might be triggering for conservatives. In fact, I have a sense of deja vu here — going back to when Mitt Romney selected Paul Ryan as his running mate in 2012.
I devoted several hundred words to calling out Ryan as a phony: “It takes a special kind of politician to vote for the TARP bailouts in 2008… and for Medicare prescription drugs in 2003… and still successfully pass yourself off as the Foremost Fiscal Conservative of the 21st Century™.”
Tea-party readers didn’t want to hear it. The hate mail was voluminous and vociferous.
But by 2015, Ryan as House speaker was shepherding Barack Obama’s “zombie budget” through Congress, adding $1.5 trillion to the national debt. Everyone had come around to the realization Ryan was just another hack.
In the fullness of time, we’ll see whether today’s assessment will hold up just as well…
We won’t dwell on J.D. Vance’s bio, which you can read anywhere — although I can’t help notice a certain pattern…
Ivy League law degree… elevated to a presidential ticket after only a year and a half in the U.S. Senate… wrote a memoir while still in his 30s…
Sounds like a certain “community organizer” from Chicago, no? Just sayin’!
Vance’s background in venture capital is promising. He seems to have a grasp that new businesses are the lifeblood of the economy.
Over the years we’ve been fond of citing a landmark study by the Kauffman Foundation: Startups — businesses less than five years old — were responsible for nearly all net job creation in the United States from 1980–2011. Presumably that’s still the case.
Unfortunately, compared with much of the world, it’s not easy to start a business in the United States.
Up until a couple years ago, the World Bank conducted an annual “ease of doing business” survey. When it came to the ease of starting a business, the United States ranked a miserable 55th. Meanwhile four former Soviet republics were in the top 10.
But on the liability side of the ledger, there’s little about Vance’s rhetoric to suggest he embraces “individual liberty” or “small government.”
It’s much more than his embrace of tariffs and protectionism — a ham-fisted solution to the “offshoring” of American jobs over the last 40 years.
Ponder this: When campaigning for the Senate two years ago, Vance said conservatives should “seize the administrative state” and use it “for our own purposes” — rather than, you know, shrink the administrative state. “Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat,” he went on — and “replace them with our people.”
That’s concerning enough — but who exactly does he consider “our people”?
The most infuriating thing about Vance is his online fanboys who try to make him out as a “non-interventionist” in foreign policy. He’s nothing of the sort.
Unlike many Iraq War veterans, the lesson he took from his time in the service is — well, it’s not the folly of U.S. intervention in the Middle East, that’s for sure. Among other things, he supports U.S. military aid to Israel with no strings attached.
As Matthew Petti wrote at Reason this spring, Vance’s Middle East policy is little different from that of the neoconservatives he professes to criticize. “He’s doubling down on exactly the vision they’ve had all along: an alliance of Israel and Sunni Muslim-led states, backed by U.S. military power, to ‘police’ the region.”
To whatever extent he might want to dial back Washington’s military obligations in the Middle East, it’s only to free up resources to confront China in its own backyard — an enormously problematic proposition.
And contrary to the image he tries to cultivate, he doesn’t even oppose U.S. military aid for Ukraine; he just quibbles over the amount and the waste and the lack of oversight. “Can we send defensive weapons to Ukrainians? Absolutely,” he told Ohio’s WCMH-TV in fall 2022.
Still, Vance has one indisputable plus…
The Crypto Veep?
Along with Vance’s embrace of startups and innovation comes an embrace of crypto.
Trump has come to embrace crypto while out of office — but the outlines of his policy for a second term are vague, to say the least.
Vance can put some meat on the bones. “Vance is no stranger to crypto,” says Paradigm crypto analyst Chris Campbell — “and has come out, with zero ambiguity, in support.”
Vance has crafted a crypto bill in the Senate that Chris says is a vast improvement on the “FIT21” legislation passed by the House in May.
Chris explains the distinction like this: “FIT21 proposed handing the bulk of crypto oversight to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) rather than the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
“Vance's bill, on the other hand, takes a simpler approach to determining which digital assets the SEC would oversee versus the CFTC.”
Sounds pedantic, I know — but Vance’s approach would allow for much more crypto innovation.
Oh, and Vance has put his crypto money where his mouth is. “Public records show he has owned Bitcoin since 2022,” Chris tells us — “somewhere between $0 and $250,000 worth.”
Perhaps not coincidentally, Bitcoin is knocking on the door of $65,000 today — up another $1,800 from yesterday.
Trump and the Markets
For the moment, Trump’s electoral prospects continue to seem intertwined with the fates and fortunes of the markets.
“By all accounts, Trump has already won,” Paradigm’s Greg Guenthner writes at The Trading Desk. “I think we’ll see the results of this new thinking reflected in the markets this week.”
Heck, even The New York Times is running a story with the headline, “The New Calculus for Democrats and Donors: Is Trump Unbeatable?”
On the back of a record close yesterday, the Dow Industrials are up another 1.4% today — barely 100 points from 41,000. The S&P 500’s rally is weaker — up about a third of a percent on the day. The Nasdaq is slightly in the red.
But the real excitement is in precious metals, both gold and silver up 1.5% on the day. Gold is in record territory at $2,458 and silver is back above $31. The HUI index of gold stocks is up to 310, another high last seen in April 2022.
“With the headlines pointing to a cooler environment for inflation,” says Paradigm income pro Zach Scheidt, “traders are betting that the Fed will cut interest rates twice this year. These expectations are having a ripple effect through the market.
“Lower rates in the U.S. make the dollar weaker… It takes more ‘weak dollars’ to buy stuff…
Since gold is priced in dollars, the dollar price of gold is now trending higher.
“I expect gold to continue to surge. It could take months (if not years) for gold to catch up to the level of inflation we’ve experienced over the past several years.”
Elsewhere in the commodity complex, crude has pulled back over a buck to $80.87 — as low as it’s been all month.
➢ One economic number of note, and it does not point to a recession: Retail sales as calculated by the Census Bureau were flat for June. But if you back out weak auto sales and the fact that gasoline prices fell last month… you have an eye-popping 0.8% increase. The “stimmy” money might be long gone, but for the moment the mighty American consumer is still comfortable pulling out the plastic.
And What About Biden?
The attempt on Trump’s life has ironically improved the prospects of Joe Biden remaining atop the Democrats’ ticket.
“Nothing public on the Democratic side will happen this week because the news will be dominated by the Trump shooting and the Republican convention,” says Paradigm’s Jim Rickards.
But based on the discussions with his Beltway contacts, “By Friday, the knives will be out for Biden… House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi are preparing to tell Biden he must withdraw from the presidential race for the good of the party and endorse Kamala Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination.”
That said… Biden has a powerful coterie of aides-de-camp still in his corner — and Jim says they might win the day “for better or worse.”
Makes sense: If The New York Times suggests Trump is “unbeatable,” who would want to replace Biden on the ticket?
Jim remains confident of a Trump win — as he’s been for months.
Others are less confident — to wit, the independent journalist Michael Yon: “If there are free elections, Trump will win. There will be no free elections.”
My own take is that Trump is on track to win the election — assuming the election takes place.
Yeah, chew on that for a moment. I’ll return to that proposition as the summer goes on…
Mailbag: JFK, Reagan, Trump…
We got a long and reflective email after yesterday’s post-assassination-attempt edition…
“I was watching JFK's motorcade in Dallas at home. I was 4 years old and the upset that took place, followed by the feed being cut just after the broadcaster said shots may have been fired is burned in my memory, in black and white, of course. I think NBC was the only network carrying the motorcade and the president's movements that day.
“I ran to the kitchen to grab my mom by her apron (yep, she was wearing an apron) and pulled her into the living room saying, ‘I think the president has been shot.’ She thought I was crazy, maybe woke up from a bad dream or just being a totally unreasonable 4-year-old.
“So Mom flips the dial to Channel 10, the Philly affiliate for CBS, where Walter Cronkite cuts into the soap operas and begins reporting. She drops to her knees and within about an hour, Cronkite announces JFK's time of death, CST then EST, and with Water Cronkite, we were sitting on the floor sobbing.
“Schoolkids are walking home early. My dad gets home around 4:30 p.m. He was visibly upset. The ’60s take wild turn, LBJ. The Vietnam War took off and I grew up.
“I was at work in March 1981 when news came over the radio. The exact same empty feeling hit me: sadness, uncertainty, fear. President Reagan survived and tried to provide the country with confidence.
“So for the third time in my life, it happened again: on Saturday evening around 6:15 p.m. EDT. This time it was different.
“Donald J. Trump stood up after an attempt on his life, raised his fist and yelled, ‘Fight!’ I believe his guardian angel made sure he turned his head to look at the chart. I saw that chart in Philly a couple weeks ago. I sat behind Trump at the Temple University facility. I thought of the unthinkable that day and decided I would stay no matter what happened. And it happened, only last Saturday, in Butler, PA.
“Thankfully, we have thousands of smartphones, cameras and more documentary evidence in this case than ever. After seeing the replays where we can see the countersnipers on the roof, it seemed clear to me that they had their weapons on a target to the president's right and returned fire practically instantaneously upon shots fired. Bystanders were telling law enforcement of the shooter's location.
“A story is circulating via Instagram that our snipers could not get clearance to take the shooter out from U.S. Secret Service senior leadership. If so, they let someone get killed and three others wounded!
“I have no confidence that Mayorkas, Cheatle or any government official will tell the truth. And I believe the Trump Organization should hire private security to watch the Secret Service to oversee all operations. President Trump has pledged to make the JFK files available and the Epstein files available. I am sure there are a lot of rich, high-ranking people that do not want the level of transparency Trump has pledged. On top of the politics of the day, there is a trembling fear in these cowards that they will be exposed and will do anything to stop Trump if he is sworn in as the 47th president.
“Thanks for letting me share.”
Dave responds: You forgot the two attempts on Gerald Ford’s life. But Ford emerged unscathed from both — and he was an “accidental president” who never commanded the adulation of the other three presidents, so of course everyone’s forgotten…
I don’t share your confidence that Trump would come through on the JFK and Epstein files during a second term. As I noted last year, he totally caved on JFK during the first.
Earlier this year, Judge Andrew Napolitano revealed a conversation he says he had with Trump on this topic shortly before Trump departed the presidency in 2021:
I said, “You promised you would release the records of the JFK assassination.”
He said to me, “Judge, if they showed you what they showed me, you wouldn't have released it either.”
And I said, “Who's they? And what did they show you?”
And then he said, “Judge, someday when we're on the phone” — and then he raised his voice — “and there aren't 15 people listening to the phone call” — back to a normal voice — “I'll tell you.”
What is it they showed him?
Seriously, it brings to mind an old gag by the late comedian Bill Hicks…
Whenever a new American president is elected they are brought into a small dark room in which the 12 biggest industrial/corporate/military/economic heads are sitting.
One of them pulls down a film screen and shows the new president a video of the JFK assassination from an angle never seen before.
They then turn to the president and say, “Any questions?”
