calling their bluff
The Jesuits on Manhattan’s Upper East side hired Mr. Eric DiMichele to teach us everything we needed to be useful, and Mr. DiMichele made sure we read "Liar's Poker”.
It’s a morality lesson about braggarts and it left me with a very clear picture of how that world – our world – operates.
Years later, its author wrote "The Big Short", about a small group of people who bucked the convention and did very well for themselves.
I hadn’t thought much about those gentlemen until yesterday when I reflected just how naked our emperors are.
A technologist who uses crystal worshipping terms like "masculine energy". Another who picks fights with strangers on the Internet over how good he is at playing video games.
Both have hitched their wagons to a literal showman, whose main talent is his ability to absorb the limelight. Because when you’re a star, they let you get away with it.
A lot of people are going to invest in these men. Maybe most.
Not me. I’m shorting them.
And I’m betting on America, instead.
The more these men whose asses are fully exposed attempt to use their reality distortion fields, the further they’ll get away from the fundamentals.
And if I’m right – which I think I am – the upside is pretty big.
One last detail: the bigger you are, the more exposure you have; to competition, to debt, to regulation, to litigation.
The American oligarchs, if that’s what we’re going to call them, are a lot weaker than they would have us believe. So is the entire GOP, for that matter. They’re running on fumes. (Or “chem trails.”)
And while TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, X, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Sinclair, the LA Times and parts of the NYT are happy to do their bidding, their agenda is still dog shit.
You can only run a Ponzi scheme for so long and they’ve been at this one for a solid decade, plus.
Will a lot of people suffer in the meantime? Will my own family suffer? Probably, sure. Definitely.
But they’re still bluffing.
And I’m still calling them on it.