Economics

When Blue Jeans Were A Symbol Of Freedom

By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

From Grok:

“For Soviet youth especially, blue jeans represented more than just fashion; they embodied individuality, rebellion, and a connection to the freedoms of the West, standing in stark contrast to the collectivist and restrictive Soviet system. Owning or wearing them became a subtle act of defiance, reflecting a broader yearning for personal expression and a lifestyle beyond the constraints of Soviet rule.”

We will circle back to why I think this is very important but let’s set the stage:

Two weeks ago we published Where the Economy is Headed.

One point was that much of the current data, particularly on the job front, seemed “optimistic” and would likely decline and/or be revised down.
We highlighted several areas of the economy that were causing concern, and those concerns have only increased in the past two weeks.
Last weekend we published You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.

We presented our arguments for why there is no Trump Put, at least anywhere near today’s levels.
We first started to fixate on the risk that all the attention on trade deficits would impact capital flows, which have materially helped the U.S. and were a part of the American Exceptionalism trade.
We highlighted that a large percentage of revenue for companies in the S&P 500 comes from other countries! (This will tie into today’s title).
We laid out two scenarios that could turn markets around, and we haven’t seen either occur yet.
On Friday, we published An American Brand, which to some extent was a prelude to today’s report.

Is the American Brand being affected in such a way that it could hurt sales of American brands?
As I am increasingly nervous about the steps being taken and their impact on our economy and brands, and want to take the time to re-iterate why late last year and early this year we were optimistic.

We specifically use Grok as a source in this piece, under the assumption that of all the AI out there, Grok is most aligned with the administration.

The Goal

The working assumption, one that has solidified over time, is that:

The president wants to return manufacturing to the U.S. and leave a legacy of rebuilding the middle class!
Fully in support of rebuilding the middle class. How can you not be? A middle class that feels safe and secure in their jobs, a middle class that can afford the American Dream, etc. would be awesome. It is not like the middle class is non-existent, but there is room for improvement.

Completely support the need to manufacture more, especially things we need to ensure safety and security. We’ve been pounding the table from an investment standpoint that anything that can be construed as important to National Security should equate to National Production. “Drill Baby Drill” is merely the tip of the iceberg. We’ve argued for “Refine Baby Refine,” where it is not just the extraction of commodities, but the extraction AND processing that is crucial to our success from a National Security standpoint. But it goes well beyond…

How Barack Obama Built An Omnipotent Thought-Control Machine… And How It Was Destroyed

Authored by David Samuels via TabletMag.com,

Rapid Onset Political Enlightenment

If anyone in the future cares enough to write an authentic history of the 2024 presidential campaign, they might begin by noting that American politics exists downstream of American culture, which is a deep and broad river. Like any river, American culture follows a particular path, which has been reconfigured at key moments by new technologies. In turn, these technologies, which redefine both space and time—canals and lakes, the postal system, the telegraph, railroads, radio and later television, the internet, and most recently the networking of billions of people in real time on social media platforms—set the rules by which stories are communicated, audiences are configured, and individuals define themselves.

Something big changed sometime after the year 2000 in the way we communicated with each other, and the means by which we absorbed new information and formed a working picture of the world around us. What changed can be understood as the effect of the ongoing transition from the world of 20th-century media to our current digital landscape. This once-every-five-centuries revolution would have large effects, ones we have only just begun to assimilate, and which have largely rendered the assumptions and accompanying social forms of the past century obsolete, even as tens of millions of people, including many who imagine themselves to reside near the top of the country’s social and intellectual pyramids, continue to imagine themselves to be living in one version or another of the long 20th century that began with the advent of a different set of mass communications technologies, which included the telegraph, radio, and film.

The time was ripe, in other words, for a cultural revolution—which would, according to the established patterns of American history, in turn generate a political one.

I first became interested in the role of digital technology in reshaping American politics a decade ago, when I reported on the selling of Barack Obama’s Iran deal for The New York Times Magazine. By the time I became interested in the subject, the outcome of Obama’s campaign to sell the deal, which had become the policy cornerstone of his second term in office, was a fait accompli. The Deal seemed odd to me, not only because American Jews were historically a key player in the Democratic Party—providing outsized numbers of voters, party organizers and publicists, in addition to huge tranches of funding for its campaigns—but because the Deal seemed to actively undermine the core assumptions of U.S. security architecture in the Middle East, whose goals were to ensure the steady flow of Middle Eastern oil to global markets while keeping U.S. troops out of the region. A Middle East in which the U.S. actively “balanced” a revisionist anti-American power like Iran against traditional U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel seemed guaranteed to become a more volatile region that would require exactly the kinds of active U.S. military intervention that Obama claimed to want to avoid. Nor…

Trump Orders New Large Scale Strikes On Iran-Backed Houthis In Yemen

Days ago Yemen’s Houthis announced they are resuming attacks on Red Sea shipping over Israel’s failure to fully open humanitarian aid corridors into the Gaza Strip.

But President Trump has responded preemptively by on Saturday ordering a series of new airstrikes on Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. The US commander-in-chief was warned he’ll continuing using “overwhelming lethal force” until the Iranian-backed Houthi completely halt their attacks.
Associated Press: Smoke rises from a location reportedly struck by U.S. airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, on Saturday.

The Houthis, known officially as the Ansar Allah movement, said that 15 people died in an updated figure, as a result of Saturday’s wave of US airstrikes.

Huge explosions were heard and witnessed in the capital in the northern province of Saada. Black smoke was seen over the Sanaa airport complex, which reportedly also hosts a very large military site.

“Our brave Warfighters are right now carrying out aerial attacks on the terrorists’ bases, leaders, and missile defenses to protect American shipping, air, and naval assets, and to restore Navigational Freedom,” Trump had continued in a post on Truth Social.

“No terrorist force will stop American commercial and naval vessels from freely sailing the Waterways of the World.”

He used to opportunity to also put Iran on notice, saying it will be held “fully accountable” for any aggression of its proxy in Yemen.

Ansar Allah’s leader last just Friday had declared a four-day deadline before attacks on shipping would resume. That four day timeline had ended by close of Tuesday, which means the Red Sea could be soon fiery scene of drone and missile attacks out of Yemen once again.

Since 2023 over 100 missile and drone attacks on commercial vessels have occurred in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The Houthis have also downed several MQ-9 Reaper drones operated by the Pentagon.

CENTCOM Forces Launch Large Scale Operation Against Iran-Backed Houthis in Yemen
On March 15, U.S. Central Command initiated a series of operations consisting of precision strikes against Iran-backed Houthi targets across Yemen to defend American interests, deter enemies, and… pic.twitter.com/u5yx8WneoG
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 15, 2025
A US-led naval coalition which began under the Biden administration has been able to do nothing in terms of putting a dent in Houthi capabilities, even after several bombing raids on Yemen, also at times including Israeli and UK jets. The pattern has been that the Houthis have only upped their attacks after US and Israeli coalition raids.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 03/15/2025 – 22:45…