“Nothing can come of nothing”
William Shakespeare, King Lear (Act I, Scene 1)
As it winds down with whimpering crescendo, I can’t help but feeling a bit tired of ’25. It’s not so much that it was a bad solar cycle. But that it has – simply and blessedly – run its course.
Part of me feels that I have lost something along the way, that am slipping, having failed, for instance, to note recent milestones such as the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth and the equally unremarked Two Hundred and Fifty Fifth of Beethoven. Though precisely five years her senior, the latter outlived the former by a full decade.
You didn’t ask about this, but I told anyway.
Because nearly 15 years after its rendering as irrelevant — due to the welcoming of any and all, er, passion preferences into the U.S. Military, Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell deserves, I believe, more of a formal funeral. It was first instituted by Bubba Clinton, who (among other matters) has had better fortnights from a disclosure of personal behavior perspective than the one just completed.
Obama killed off DADT, and who am I not to join in bidding it good riddance?
Because we are, of course, in a new/old era, with new/old leadership. And of this we are all wearying as well – nodding off as events play out like a lesser Shakesperean tragedy.
But increasingly, 47/45 reminds me of the central figure in King Lear, a work that many experts (a designation that cannot, alas, be ascribed to your correspondent) consider to be among his finest — raging with fools in storms while his sycophants seek to make off with his empire.
In “Lear”, it all begins with a question as to which of his daughters doth (yes, doth) love him most.
The two eldest – them nasty bitches Regan and Goneril — seek to outflank one another in an hysteria of orgiastic flattery. The youngest – Cordelia (the one who truly loves him) – answers as follows:
“Nothing”.
To which Lear responds with our introductory quote.
He banishes her, dividing his kingdom between his two obsequious daughters, both of whom proceed to fuck him. Hard.
No spoiler alert is needed to state that he loses his kingdom. And his life.
It all went down so quickly – in five short acts – and I have this Leary feeling that Trump is facing the same Ask/Tell trajectory as did that tragic Shakespearian monarch whose story unfolded so famously in the early parts of the 17th Century.
He seems, at any rate, to spend increasing portions of his time attempting to discern who within his realms is willing to most energetically express their love for him.
Trust your risk manager on this: there are no constructive answers to the question, and even posing it, as Lear quickly learned, increases downside exposure – often parabolically.
We’ll soon find out how this unfolds for our present-day Lear, but if the mystic threads that bound together the MAGA coalition unravel in earnest (as I fear they might), I feel that we may all look back at last Monday – Jane Austen’s 250th birthday — as a defining moment.
Specifically, and for the obtuse, I refer to two events. First, there was his despicably narcissistic response to questions about the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife, which (if you were somehow under a rock and missed it) he ascribed to the victims’ outspoken political opposition to himself.
As if.
And the sad part about it is that by all appearance, he’s serious, tacitly informing us that our only options are either getting with the program, his program, or justifiably having our throats slit by our progeny.
I struggle to understand how this can be said to be reflective of sound leadership, my mixed feelings about Reiner notwithstanding. I didn’t like Meathead, but he played the role well. To me, the central premise of “All in the Family” was a philosophical struggle between an undereducated, crude working class schlub, who nonetheless fought bravely for his country, worked diligently to provide for a family that he loved, paid his bills, and struggled earnestly to understand a world that was changing too rapidly for his dimming eyes — and a cerebral, pompous, wannabe academic, more attuned to the times but willing to live on the largesse of the former – a father-in-law he disdained and openly ridiculed.
I believe Archie won that there battle, by a knockout.
I am, though, a huge fan of some of Reiner’s films, most notably (natch) Spinal Tap. But I did not agree with his politics, and routinely wished that he would, as Archie often asked The Dingbat to do, stifle himself.
But as is blindingly obvious to anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with reality, not one bit of this crime had anything to do with Trump. And the fact that he made the patricide about himself is, to me, an ominous sign of the ghosts of Christmases yet to Come.
On the same day, the Presidentially appointed Trustees of what was once known as the Kennedy Center (our capitol’s main monument to a leader slain in his prime, who also was a WWII hero and a playa of historic renown), comprised of such disinterested individuals as Rick Grennell, Pam Bondi, Susan Wiles and (oh by the way) Donald J. Trump, voted to change the venue’s name to the Trump-Kennedy Center – bumping the Captain of PT-109/purported paramour of Marilyn to second billing — in favor of a Vietnam draft dodger/playa of lower standing.
For this act of narcissistic idiocy alone, I wish unspeakable horrors on him.
But more important to this financial publication is the hazards that these unhinged actions pose to the Capital Economy. Which I rate to be at the top of the list of risk factors for 2026.
From a market perspective, we are poised to end its predecessor (’25) with Equities up and Energy/Interest Rates down. Presumably, we’ll take it. All. Day. Long.
You didn’t ask, but I’ll tell you that I believe these trends – particularly the last two (lower interest rates and energy costs) carry forward through significant portions of the New Year.
Because, for a time at any rate, and for political reasons, all available vigor will be brought to bear to suppress borrowing rates and prices at the pump. This is my convicted opinion and if I’m right about it, the impacts will carry forward from Winter to Summer. Electoral forces will drive Interest (particularly Mortgage) Rates down with great thrust into the traditional home selling season, which crescendos in June. Just when the peak driving season commences. At which point said forces will prime their sights on the Energy Complex.
While the claimers of patricide credit and Entertainment Hall re-namers have myriad tools at their disposal to manage these dynamics, it is their associated incentivization to do so which (I believe) should be most ascendant in our calculus. The electorate’s patience is wearing thin with all their shenanigans and might not care that the Economy is strong and the world arguably less at strife than it was a year ago.
I feel that if the midterms were today, the outcomes would reflect this, tilting extensively more towards anger than satisfaction with the state of national and global affairs. And, if this dynamic holds through November, then the backlash to the current possessors of power will be mighty in its beholding.
I’m not sure there’s much that the current regime can do about this, but what they can do, they will. Because they must. To save their own necks. And what they can do – most prominently – is to throw Benjaminz our way in the form of lower energy costs, cheaper mortgages and maybe even (as has been discussed) crude cash payments.
It’s all bad economics, and again, probably won’t work politically. But it should support, if not turbocharge, risk asset markets.
And this, I will tell you, though you didn’t ask, is why I suggest you remain long going into the New Year.
JFK once exhorted us to “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”. It was a memorable line from his magnificent Inaugural Address, began by proclaiming “let the word go forth, from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has passed to a new generation of Americans”.
That Cat — say what else you will about him – had style.
And I’d bet big money that before the decade is out, he will have regained 100% of the nomenclature of the above-referenced Washingtonian Performing Arts Center.
Trump, meanwhile, will still have his towers, and, whether incarcerated or not, will exit this drama massively enriched. Where the rest of us stand in this regard, is an open question.
But even if you asked, I couldn’t tell you.
So, I reckon we best leave it at that.
TIMSHEL