Today of course is the last day of June – the lunar cycle most prominently associated with the ritual of uttering marital vows. One might believe we’ve moved past this pre-Victorian gobbledygook, that our elevated intelligence, awareness and sophistication have migrated us beyond the need to ritualize our couplings. But one would be wrong. Flying in the face of our new age sensibilities are data that indicate a nuptialistic uptick, along with, even more improbably, a slight decline in the severing of associated bonds:
We can perhaps all be pleased that not only are people tying the knot at a rate last seen before lockdowns, but more of them are living up to these commitments. For better or for worse.
Contemporaneously, and across this evaporated month, one cannot fail to notice an incremental spring in that spongy Trumpian step. June ’25 has been by all accounts, by far the best month of this rockier than expected term.
Perversely, it perhaps began – if not with a divorce – then at least with a rude decoupling of one of the greatest bromances in American political history: that (for the incurably obtuse) between our 47th President and The Richest Guy in the World. The liaison, always star-crossed, was most assuredly doomed from the start. So be it. But it’s unravelling was instructive. The scorned latter immediately began taking pot shots at the former, who issued him a swift beatdown with quickness. Musk is now (mostly) minding his own beeswax, and that, at any rate, makes one of them.
We’d barely time to process this intelligence when Israel, deciding that enough was, indeed, enough, took out major chunks of the Iranian nuclear complex. The United States followed up with, if not a knockout blow, then at least the delivery of a standing 8-count – and the guys on the receiving end seeing nothing but butterflies dancing in front of their eyes.
The victory was thorough and unambiguous – creating by all accounts a significant tailwind for the Administration’s agenda. Of a sudden, our partners in NATO are increasing their defense budgets by orders of magnitude (or, at any rate, offering such lip service). Published reports, quoting our Big Orange Rabbi’s favorite Cantor (aka Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick), inform us that the U.S. has inked (though details remain elusive) one swell trade deal with China. I suspect that other such arrangements will now also be struck more favorably and with greater expedition (among other incentives, none of our trade partners are presumably eager to see those B-2s dropping their payloads down from their airspace).
Meantime, somehow, we’re happily collecting 10% tariffs from all exporters (50% from China) – with nary a dent in economic activity nor a blip of incremental inflation. For now.
It’s also generating some positive momentum for The Big Beautiful Bill (BBB).
Our hero also not only won a big fat orange Supreme Court victory respecting limitations on the power of Federal Judges to strike down Executive Orders, but, in addition, causing a very public, non-decorative girl fight between Justices Brown and Barrett in the process.
However, returning to our theme, it does beg the question as to whether all this is for better or for worse.
Because perhaps our Fearless Leader’s single most prominent trait is a combination of running up the score and rubbing his opponents’ faces in their own defeats.
Troubling examples of this personality feature (one calls it a bug at one’s own hazard) are popping up in multiple quarters. He ordered the reversal of Israeli jets in mid-flight. Closer to home, by diktat, he instructed Congress not to go home until they finished their work and handed him his BBB.
He walked away from critical trade negotiations with Canada, implicitly telling them “No Digital Services for you. One Year (or until I decide otherwise)”.
Then, on Thursday, he floated the concept of naming his choice to replace Chair Pow by +/- the End of the Summer – fully nine months before this individual (if confirmed by the Senate) would take office.
The implications of this are clear. It is the establishment of a Shadow Fed, with no powers other than to criticize the Bank’s custodians any time they fail to do his bidding.
This. Is. A. Bad. Idea. Though purely Trumpian in its formation, it is likely to have minimal impact – other than to further antagonize Fed Management and to add confusion to those seeking, albeit in quixotic fashion, to deconstruct the glidepath of pending Monetary Policy. As mentioned in earlier installments, there are twelve seats on the Fed Open Market Committee, and the Chair is only one of them. Some dude (or fair damsel) in Washington taking routine pot shots at their consensus decisions, promising big changes when they take the top spot, is not likely to alter the trajectory of their actions.
And I fear (without certainty) the more victories the Big Guy runs up, the more blustery, dictatorial policy we will experience.
I believe that The Electorate has finite patience for such shenanigans. And, of course, in ominous blowback, a glib, affable 33-year-old Upper Middle-Class Millennial Antisemitic Socialist – a former Hip Hop artist who was born in frickin’ Uganda, ran away with the New York Mayoral Democratic Primary, in the process humiliating a two-term deposed former governor who himself is the scion of a two-term governor with a bridge named after him.
It is a sign of our troubled times that entering this voting sequence, many of us were praying that the arrogant, sleezy, dissembling Andrew Cuomo could somehow squeeze out a victory. And that now, anyone committed to stopping this train is throwing their full weight behind unpopular Incumbent Eric Adams, who is running as an Independent because he didn’t have a prayer of making a respectable showing in his own party’s primary.
Even, the once-respectable Chicago Tribune, the self-proclaimed World’s Greatest Newspaper but one that long ago sold its soul for elusive profits associated with the spewing of progressive gospel, published an editorial begging New York not to make the same mistake that Chicago had by electing Teachers Union flunky Brandon Johnson.
The Trib’s got this one right. Because if this Mamdani person gets elected — and bearing in mind that the Democrats hold a Supermajority in the City Council, it will render existence in New York City, a challenge even in the best of times, all that much more difficult. And, counterintuitively, the further down the socioeconomic scale one is positioned, the worse off one will be. Higher taxes, elevated Minimum Wage and similar policies will accelerate the already-rapid Exodus of businesses (and associated jobs) from the City. Rent Control will increase the housing shortage. Government grocery stores will crush bodegas and crowd out the price-efficient delivery of staples for both operators and their customers.
Free busses? Don’t even get me started.
I reckon we’ll see how far Zo gets with all this nonsense, or even if he is elected at all. There is a school of thought that argues his ascendence is a boon for Conservative Principles, as it stands to toe-tag Progressive Thought once and for all. I’ll take The Under on that one. And will hope for an outcome that fosters any attainable measure of rationality in the governance of this crazy city.
Again, I’ll also take it as a warning to Trump to slow his roll, as I have wished he would do all along.
I’m not hopeful, though. And investors aren’t helping. By the end of the week, our Equity Indices had captured new high ground. Crude Oil had settled gently between 50, 100 and 200-day Moving Averages (as though an historic attack on a critical center for the production and distribution had never happened), and Treasury yields had backed off pleasantly. By all accounts, The Fed is helping this along – by if not frantically buying its own paper at least backing off on its asset shedding ways.
The USD has seen better months, but you can’t have everything.
In any event, we have somehow wound down the first half of the year and can anticipate some quietude as we enter July. No critical scheduled data releases are on the calendar. Our B-2s are in dry dock. Friday, is of course, a holiday (perhaps not rising to the dignity of Juneteenth, but sufficiently important to at least shutter the markets), and mass early escapes from the madness will certainly transpire.
We return to a full docket of vexing challenges and enticing opportunities. Then we will be compelled to process all that earnings and macro data. Budget legislation must either advance or stall. And I believe that it would be unwise to bank much on the current quietude in the Middle East.
There’s ample reason to be encouraged. But as is the key message of this note, the more matters break favorably, the more we must allow ourselves room to worry about administrative overreach.
It’s like marriage – for better or for worse – only with a fixed sell-by date (21 January 2029). Weddings are always nice. Or should be. Then, hopefully, there’s a honeymoon. Maybe that’s what’s happening now, albeit on a delayed basis.
But then we must hunker down to the realities of daily living. The echoes of bells diminish to silence; the scattered rice has been removed from the premises. We find out who our true partners are – be they authentic helpmates or despotic tyrants.
For better or for worse. We’ll find out.
It’s the only way.
TIMSHEL