Well done. Thank you. I was so curious what you thought of the carry trade.
My crypto friends are hyper focused on it as the event that will usher in the new financial world based on crypto. I believe them but (based on your writings ) was starting to wonder if the unwind of the carry trade was always a deep state threat if someone didn’t follow their instructions they would carry out. Like the threat of Iran closing the strait of Hormuz, threatened for decades and in typical reverse Hegelian fashion , Trump closed it for them.
What you are saying makes sense, even if it was at one time a deep state threat, it is now what Trump will turn on them to effect his own outcome. Return to the real and genuine.
Not totally sure on the crypto angle regarding the carry trade, but I do think I've got the beginnings of an understanding of said carry trade, and its unwinding.
A few years back, you quoted Musashi from The Rings of Fire:
“When you know the Way broadly, you will see it in all things”.
I had never heard it before but it instantly resonated. It made “the War of Stories” make sense to me.
Projection makes perception. The world is a mirror, reflecting one’s internal mental state. On the collective Mindscape level, the Machine captured perception into beliefs in forever wars and economic hardships.
The Machine “once believed their narrative power projection capabilities were infinite”…until someone with better stories came along with a global platform to question “their” version of Reality.
While you’ve written this piece for people smarter than I am about the financial “story,” nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed reading it within the context ”of the Way broadly.”
I can see the Machine-crafted illusions fracturing, revealing Golden Age possibilities growing ever nearer.
“Trump is essentially forcing the Mindscape to dissociate” from the old to make room for the new!
I don't think you need to be 'smart' to start understanding the financial system.
In fact, I think it's more been layers and layers of obfuscation and fugazi meant to make people believe exactly that, when the truth is far simpler and more subversive than we've been led to believe.
The Machine's narrative power projection capabilities were nearly infinite -- infinite, for all practical purposes -- back when [they] controlled all of the power projection points, most notably the media. Today's citizen media have taken that power away from them. Trump is telling and showing us things that never would have seen the light of day, if they still controlled the media. But how many times in the past few years have we seen a kid with a cellphone and a small army of followers impact the world? 24-year-old Nick Shirley, for instance, in Minnesota? He's just one of many.
[They] have lost power projection because they have lost control of the message.
Burning Bright is right -- the narrative is more powerful than the reality.
WOW, not just a great writer but a Financial Savant too:-) Your not just another pretty face:-)
You continue to amaze me. This is way outside the typical Truther wheelhouse and you nailed it.
This really goes to the heart of the Golden Age. Amazing that I have sensed for decades that there was a rat in that wood pile, but you openly exposed that the Emperor has no Clothes! Disentanglement happening right under our noses with the Discombobulator has everyone running in a million other directions.
Not only am I totally entertained by you writing but also so much better informed... and months before most others.
Outstanding post, BB! Yep, it is one thing to buy a stock based on market feedback, and entirely different when you can make bets on whether a stock price goes up.... or down. That is NOT market forces. How is it healthy to make money on failure? I know...
The state of our world/country is truly a quagmire of evil bastards! How did we let it get this way? Overwhelming to say the least. Thank you BB for putting a “bright” light for us !
Remember, Tonya, the evil bastards are few and good citizens are many. And that the evil bastards are on their way out, thanks in good part to Trump who is shining the light on the cockroaches as they scatter into the dark crevices to hide in fear.
We live on the top floor of our condo building which is primarily frequented by vacationers renting by the week. People in the elevator always say “ooooooooh, the Penthouse!” To which I respond “Champagne hopes and caviar dreams…” They have to be over a certain age to get it. They ask what it is like and I tell them we all have watermelon scented bidets. It is an absolute blast when the elevators are out (which is way too often). 🤪
Watch the timeline reset in real time. Timelines are set by expectations of those in it ('the Matrix' as it was sometimes called). BB is calling out the futures market because it is (or maybe was) the way our expectations were managed. Warsh's refusal to play this game is what is shattering the matrix even to those who refuse to take the 'red pill'. People who have followed Trump's two visible and one invisible with a demented front man terms, have talked for years about expectation management; that poor expectation management is what is fueling the black pillers' followers.
We have to stop calling for arrests and live our lives on Trump's timeline if we want it to be real; it may be painful because to do it at our level, we must shatter our dependence upon experts. That is not to say ignore a doctor's advice. It does mean take his advice the same way you would take advice from a family member: do your homework and decide whether the doctor or any other expert's advice is relevant and form a plan, having the guts to forego the experts' advice if it doesn't fit into your plan, even taking kids out of public indoctrination centers and teach them yourself. Calling for arrests is an attachment to the matrix and that is what is holding us from Trump's golden age.
Trump's posturing with Iran is starting to shatter the futures oil markets because every hostile post by Iran's propaganda machine no longer has the disruptive force it did before. I am beginning to wonder how real these posts are: is it theater or is it really an attempt by the hardliners to project power that they no longer have? If we are to believe Trump's narrative, then are we to assume that Iran is playing the 'bad cop' and Trump the 'good cop'?
Excellent and understandable analysis, as usual. Thank you. Interesting they releasing a movie on our bday ( yes me a 14 August also…just 40ish years apart). A Brink of War. Message in art? Interesting times ahead. As they say “buckle up buttercup”. Much love from here to you and yours ❤️❤️❤️
Great Article as usual. When I was going to send this out to friends I thought it would be nice to include a link to Part 1 (Reality Wars - Part 2 .) However, when searching for it I failed to find it. Your stack of previous articles is huge and doesn't seem to be ordered. Logic would tell me that newest articles would be on top of the list, but they aren't listed that way. And there doesn't seem to be a search box with which to enter a title or theme. I know you are a busy guy, but it would be nice to have. BTW - where is Part 1???? And the title changed from the emailed article to the linked article. Maybe that is part of my confusion.
Sometimes, I retroactively change feature titles to avoid confusion or to link them as part of a series when I didn't originally intend them to be part of a series.
The original title for this piece was, "The Great Unwinding."
I actually changed that title when it was brought to my attention it was the exact name of a podcast episode from my friend Chris Paul from 2023, on an entirely different subject.
This one fits well into the Reality Wars framework, so I added it there.
Gosh - now I need to keep track of all the big words and ever changing word pictures, but I have to become capable of discerning when you slip in a name change. I think the talent may be have to do with seeing the future or what is only marginally visible, but the closest I can get to it is just plain crazy :)
Those are some good insights. It is interesting to see how the 'Soros protégé' who initially struck fear into the hearts of Joe/Jane Populists across the nation has started to come into his own & really hit some big ones outta the park. Many here were/are also understandably concerned about Warsh's own CV & background... But we've all seen POTUS discombobulate everybody with his character KayFabery. Things certainly are rarely what they seem at first glance. Warsh is a hawk. He is there to continue what Powell started with mopping up excess liquidity out in the offshore Eurodollar mkt. (infamously, the 'Shadow Banking System'). That QT cycle was all about reversing outbound Capital flows from the US, and directing them back inward. After Bernanke, Yellen, & Co. had ridden the American economy hard & strung it up half-dead during the Zero%/Neg Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP/NIRP) yrs, everybody's favorite global banking cartel circuit was busy leveraging & rehypothecating every asset in existence up to Infinity abroad, and saturating the whole mess with derivatives. U kno, wat could go wrong, &n all a' thaat?🤔...
The whole process of getting the US off the global debt indexing rate of LIBOR and onto our own version of the same with SOFR really kicked up when the repo mkt crashed in the fall of 2019. It even coincided with clear moves that Putin was making in the oil mkts. and with Russia's involvement in Syria. As we so often find, these things are all related. And one can't really understand the broader trends without knowing how all the major financial machinery pieces interface together.
To that end, here is a good crash course that I think will help fill in some gaps along those lines...
YT: 'AI & Eisenhower | Matt Dines, Tom Luongo, Vince Lanci (TPC #2,108)'
U got a Bond guy, a Gold guy, & a Geopolitical Finance writer nerd (Tom, Lol) to break down:
- Yield curve dynamics with the UK/US 2yr-10yr spreads
- Fannie&Freddie conservatorship
- AIG Bailout
- Structure and roles of the LBMA, COMEX, Shanghai Futures XChg, etc.
- Ken Griffin eatin Leo's lunch
- Data ctr. devel. involving the Military & DOE
- WarnerBros/Oracle M&A dynamic
And EVEN, yes, that notorious Yen Carry Trade Unwindin, itself💹💸...-- Spectre a which, Tom was warnin fokes about at least 4yrs ago... WAY before anyone else in the broader podcast universe (excluding bond traders just bringing home some weekly bacon). He also predicted the money laundry fallout via Iraqi Dinar & gold throughout the Middle East and collapsing of sanctions that had enabled Europe to get cheap energy from Iran at everyone else's expense.
(Now, I know, "It's not about bein 1st or Right," but them some pretty substantial 'receipts'😅
& considering Humanity's habit of assigning Premiums to both of those, that trend seems unlikely to change anytime soon.)
All in all, it's a fun one I thought u might find interestin & helpful, Maybe can even paint some colors that colorblind Cats can see!😀🐯🎨
That was very cool, Joe! I looked up the Yen Carry Trade.....the machine guided the narrative and explained it well. It reiterated who was involved in this very controlled system that allows hedge funds, banks, government, big and small alike to borrow cheap, invest in basically nothing, allowing them to move money around and make money from moving money around! I had no idea. I also looked up mark to market, which was enlightening to learn about. Thank you for helping us to learn this, Joe.
And that is just one small part of the entire house of cards that is the Worldwide Finance Industry. The whole thing is fake. The only real part of it is the actual money they extract from real people. That's real.
Some told me this: “If you go to your post and right click on the three dots in the upper right corner a menu will drop down and you can select edit and edit your port” :-)
What stays with me here is the idea that so much power has depended on persuading us that the future is already decided—priced, narrated, managed and handed back to us as reality. If that machinery begins to lose its ability to dictate expectation, then something far larger than a financial correction is taking place. The present itself becomes disruptive. Whatever one thinks of the players involved, there is something profound about watching a system built on managed perception being forced into contact with what can actually be measured, lived and experienced. Perhaps that is the real Reality War: not controlling the story, but breaking our dependence on one.
Well done. Thank you. I was so curious what you thought of the carry trade.
My crypto friends are hyper focused on it as the event that will usher in the new financial world based on crypto. I believe them but (based on your writings ) was starting to wonder if the unwind of the carry trade was always a deep state threat if someone didn’t follow their instructions they would carry out. Like the threat of Iran closing the strait of Hormuz, threatened for decades and in typical reverse Hegelian fashion , Trump closed it for them.
What you are saying makes sense, even if it was at one time a deep state threat, it is now what Trump will turn on them to effect his own outcome. Return to the real and genuine.
Thanks again
Not totally sure on the crypto angle regarding the carry trade, but I do think I've got the beginnings of an understanding of said carry trade, and its unwinding.
Thanks for reading.
BOJ's Ueda is the Fed's wingman, especially going forward in the near term. Yes, this was no accident.
Yes! “They’re upset that he’s crashing into them, and that he brought Reality along for the ride.”
A few years back, you quoted Musashi from The Rings of Fire:
“When you know the Way broadly, you will see it in all things”.
I had never heard it before but it instantly resonated. It made “the War of Stories” make sense to me.
Projection makes perception. The world is a mirror, reflecting one’s internal mental state. On the collective Mindscape level, the Machine captured perception into beliefs in forever wars and economic hardships.
The Machine “once believed their narrative power projection capabilities were infinite”…until someone with better stories came along with a global platform to question “their” version of Reality.
While you’ve written this piece for people smarter than I am about the financial “story,” nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed reading it within the context ”of the Way broadly.”
I can see the Machine-crafted illusions fracturing, revealing Golden Age possibilities growing ever nearer.
“Trump is essentially forcing the Mindscape to dissociate” from the old to make room for the new!
Love your mind, BB ❤️🌟
I don't think you need to be 'smart' to start understanding the financial system.
In fact, I think it's more been layers and layers of obfuscation and fugazi meant to make people believe exactly that, when the truth is far simpler and more subversive than we've been led to believe.
Thanks, BB! I’ve learned quite a lot about the financial system from all of you at Badlands for sure.
The Machine's narrative power projection capabilities were nearly infinite -- infinite, for all practical purposes -- back when [they] controlled all of the power projection points, most notably the media. Today's citizen media have taken that power away from them. Trump is telling and showing us things that never would have seen the light of day, if they still controlled the media. But how many times in the past few years have we seen a kid with a cellphone and a small army of followers impact the world? 24-year-old Nick Shirley, for instance, in Minnesota? He's just one of many.
[They] have lost power projection because they have lost control of the message.
Burning Bright is right -- the narrative is more powerful than the reality.
Your articles are so great. Thank you for analyzing and explaining exactly what is happening.
Doing my best, Barbara. Thank you.
WOW, not just a great writer but a Financial Savant too:-) Your not just another pretty face:-)
You continue to amaze me. This is way outside the typical Truther wheelhouse and you nailed it.
This really goes to the heart of the Golden Age. Amazing that I have sensed for decades that there was a rat in that wood pile, but you openly exposed that the Emperor has no Clothes! Disentanglement happening right under our noses with the Discombobulator has everyone running in a million other directions.
Not only am I totally entertained by you writing but also so much better informed... and months before most others.
Thanks BB, you truly are a very Bright spot!
God Wins!
God Bless!!
I mean, I wouldn't say savant, but I would say retarded.
:)
Outstanding post, BB! Yep, it is one thing to buy a stock based on market feedback, and entirely different when you can make bets on whether a stock price goes up.... or down. That is NOT market forces. How is it healthy to make money on failure? I know...
Exactly.
Leverage built atop leverage built atop futures.
It's not.
The state of our world/country is truly a quagmire of evil bastards! How did we let it get this way? Overwhelming to say the least. Thank you BB for putting a “bright” light for us !
Thanks for reading, Tonya.
Remember, Tonya, the evil bastards are few and good citizens are many. And that the evil bastards are on their way out, thanks in good part to Trump who is shining the light on the cockroaches as they scatter into the dark crevices to hide in fear.
Thanks for writing BB!
Another great missive. I took note of "Hegelian hopes and demonic dreams" and said reference (in my mind) to "Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous".
Dang, there are two others here?
Bring back punk!
We live on the top floor of our condo building which is primarily frequented by vacationers renting by the week. People in the elevator always say “ooooooooh, the Penthouse!” To which I respond “Champagne hopes and caviar dreams…” They have to be over a certain age to get it. They ask what it is like and I tell them we all have watermelon scented bidets. It is an absolute blast when the elevators are out (which is way too often). 🤪
Watch the timeline reset in real time. Timelines are set by expectations of those in it ('the Matrix' as it was sometimes called). BB is calling out the futures market because it is (or maybe was) the way our expectations were managed. Warsh's refusal to play this game is what is shattering the matrix even to those who refuse to take the 'red pill'. People who have followed Trump's two visible and one invisible with a demented front man terms, have talked for years about expectation management; that poor expectation management is what is fueling the black pillers' followers.
We have to stop calling for arrests and live our lives on Trump's timeline if we want it to be real; it may be painful because to do it at our level, we must shatter our dependence upon experts. That is not to say ignore a doctor's advice. It does mean take his advice the same way you would take advice from a family member: do your homework and decide whether the doctor or any other expert's advice is relevant and form a plan, having the guts to forego the experts' advice if it doesn't fit into your plan, even taking kids out of public indoctrination centers and teach them yourself. Calling for arrests is an attachment to the matrix and that is what is holding us from Trump's golden age.
Trump's posturing with Iran is starting to shatter the futures oil markets because every hostile post by Iran's propaganda machine no longer has the disruptive force it did before. I am beginning to wonder how real these posts are: is it theater or is it really an attempt by the hardliners to project power that they no longer have? If we are to believe Trump's narrative, then are we to assume that Iran is playing the 'bad cop' and Trump the 'good cop'?
Iran and Trump are absolutely wielding a pincer on both narrative and economic grounds, IMO.
Attempts to project power they don't have is the very definition of theater, don't you think?
"When the world and I were young
Just yesterday
Life was such a simple game
A child could play
It was easy then to tell right from wrong
Easy then to tell weak from strong
When a man should stand and fight
Or just go along
But today there is no day or night
Today there is no dark or light
Today there is no black or white
Only shades of gray."
-- Cynthia Weil & Barry Mann, "Shades Of Gray," released by The Monkees May 1967
My apologies to BB! I read your article with gratitude. I had recently read a Joe Lange article as well and when I replied to you, I called you Joe!
Now Joe is great as well, but still.....🧐
The Bright Empire forgives, but it does not forget!
LOL
Like an Elephant 🐯🐘🌊🌊😛
Excellent and understandable analysis, as usual. Thank you. Interesting they releasing a movie on our bday ( yes me a 14 August also…just 40ish years apart). A Brink of War. Message in art? Interesting times ahead. As they say “buckle up buttercup”. Much love from here to you and yours ❤️❤️❤️
Will have to check that movie out!
Great Article as usual. When I was going to send this out to friends I thought it would be nice to include a link to Part 1 (Reality Wars - Part 2 .) However, when searching for it I failed to find it. Your stack of previous articles is huge and doesn't seem to be ordered. Logic would tell me that newest articles would be on top of the list, but they aren't listed that way. And there doesn't seem to be a search box with which to enter a title or theme. I know you are a busy guy, but it would be nice to have. BTW - where is Part 1???? And the title changed from the emailed article to the linked article. Maybe that is part of my confusion.
Sometimes, I retroactively change feature titles to avoid confusion or to link them as part of a series when I didn't originally intend them to be part of a series.
The original title for this piece was, "The Great Unwinding."
I actually changed that title when it was brought to my attention it was the exact name of a podcast episode from my friend Chris Paul from 2023, on an entirely different subject.
This one fits well into the Reality Wars framework, so I added it there.
https://burningbright.substack.com/p/reality-wars
Gosh - now I need to keep track of all the big words and ever changing word pictures, but I have to become capable of discerning when you slip in a name change. I think the talent may be have to do with seeing the future or what is only marginally visible, but the closest I can get to it is just plain crazy :)
Those are some good insights. It is interesting to see how the 'Soros protégé' who initially struck fear into the hearts of Joe/Jane Populists across the nation has started to come into his own & really hit some big ones outta the park. Many here were/are also understandably concerned about Warsh's own CV & background... But we've all seen POTUS discombobulate everybody with his character KayFabery. Things certainly are rarely what they seem at first glance. Warsh is a hawk. He is there to continue what Powell started with mopping up excess liquidity out in the offshore Eurodollar mkt. (infamously, the 'Shadow Banking System'). That QT cycle was all about reversing outbound Capital flows from the US, and directing them back inward. After Bernanke, Yellen, & Co. had ridden the American economy hard & strung it up half-dead during the Zero%/Neg Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP/NIRP) yrs, everybody's favorite global banking cartel circuit was busy leveraging & rehypothecating every asset in existence up to Infinity abroad, and saturating the whole mess with derivatives. U kno, wat could go wrong, &n all a' thaat?🤔...
The whole process of getting the US off the global debt indexing rate of LIBOR and onto our own version of the same with SOFR really kicked up when the repo mkt crashed in the fall of 2019. It even coincided with clear moves that Putin was making in the oil mkts. and with Russia's involvement in Syria. As we so often find, these things are all related. And one can't really understand the broader trends without knowing how all the major financial machinery pieces interface together.
To that end, here is a good crash course that I think will help fill in some gaps along those lines...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZYw1IXkTuw
YT: 'AI & Eisenhower | Matt Dines, Tom Luongo, Vince Lanci (TPC #2,108)'
U got a Bond guy, a Gold guy, & a Geopolitical Finance writer nerd (Tom, Lol) to break down:
- Yield curve dynamics with the UK/US 2yr-10yr spreads
- Fannie&Freddie conservatorship
- AIG Bailout
- Structure and roles of the LBMA, COMEX, Shanghai Futures XChg, etc.
- Ken Griffin eatin Leo's lunch
- Data ctr. devel. involving the Military & DOE
- WarnerBros/Oracle M&A dynamic
And EVEN, yes, that notorious Yen Carry Trade Unwindin, itself💹💸...-- Spectre a which, Tom was warnin fokes about at least 4yrs ago... WAY before anyone else in the broader podcast universe (excluding bond traders just bringing home some weekly bacon). He also predicted the money laundry fallout via Iraqi Dinar & gold throughout the Middle East and collapsing of sanctions that had enabled Europe to get cheap energy from Iran at everyone else's expense.
(Now, I know, "It's not about bein 1st or Right," but them some pretty substantial 'receipts'😅
& considering Humanity's habit of assigning Premiums to both of those, that trend seems unlikely to change anytime soon.)
All in all, it's a fun one I thought u might find interestin & helpful, Maybe can even paint some colors that colorblind Cats can see!😀🐯🎨
Have you read the Wolf of Main Street?
You'd probably like it ...
https://burningbright.substack.com/p/the-wolf-of-main-street
That was very cool, Joe! I looked up the Yen Carry Trade.....the machine guided the narrative and explained it well. It reiterated who was involved in this very controlled system that allows hedge funds, banks, government, big and small alike to borrow cheap, invest in basically nothing, allowing them to move money around and make money from moving money around! I had no idea. I also looked up mark to market, which was enlightening to learn about. Thank you for helping us to learn this, Joe.
And that is just one small part of the entire house of cards that is the Worldwide Finance Industry. The whole thing is fake. The only real part of it is the actual money they extract from real people. That's real.
Reconning is coming...
Arbitrage, one Hell'a'Dat DRUGzz😂💹📈📉💸
We want to see the arbitragers in the unemployment line 👍
I now see you Joe comment:-)
I was scrambling trying to edit my post when I saw what I'd done.....could not figure it out!
When the young people move out the tech support is lost 😊
Joe, thank you for sharing with me how to edit my comment. You are a gentleman and a scholar!
I just used edit to remove a redundant part of my reply. Editing is awesome!!
Some told me this: “If you go to your post and right click on the three dots in the upper right corner a menu will drop down and you can select edit and edit your port” :-)
What stays with me here is the idea that so much power has depended on persuading us that the future is already decided—priced, narrated, managed and handed back to us as reality. If that machinery begins to lose its ability to dictate expectation, then something far larger than a financial correction is taking place. The present itself becomes disruptive. Whatever one thinks of the players involved, there is something profound about watching a system built on managed perception being forced into contact with what can actually be measured, lived and experienced. Perhaps that is the real Reality War: not controlling the story, but breaking our dependence on one.