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A Bad Week For America

We saw two big symbols of American decline this week, first the U.S. military's $320 million floating pier break apart off the coast of Gaza, 

And then, of course, Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts for... recording payments made to his attorney as legal expenses? Even left-leaning legal analysts, such as Richard Hasen, thought this prosecution was a stretch, to put it mildly. 

Let's look at some of the more incisive initial reactions to the Trump verdict. 

Reactions To The Trump Verdict

Elon Musk noted the trivial nature of the charges, and how these sorts of manufactured paperwork errors could be used to target anyone. 

Liberal journalist Michael Tracey remarked that this was a particularly weak case to use to break the 235 year taboo against prosecuting a former President.

Tracey also pointed out how coverage of the Trump trial was overshadowing the Biden administration's escalations in its proxy war with Russia over the Ukraine.

Auron MacIntyre alluded to Benjamin Franklin's famous response to socialite Elizabeth Willing Powel's question about what whether the Constitutional Convention had decided on a republic or a monarchy ("A Republic, if you can keep it.").

David Pinsen quoted a post by David Sacks with Trump's military school yearbook picture, alluding to the Democrats' typical defense of felons.

The Russian podcasters RWAPodcast noted the irony of this kangaroo court conviction happening in America, which spends so much time lecturing other countries about their corruption and lack of rule of law.

Sergei Witte reminded us that a federal prosecutor declined to prosecute President Biden because he felt Biden didn't know what he was doing when he made his records infraction.

British economist Philip Pilkington suggested the conviction of Trump was part of America's "unwinding".

He also noted that it was happening in the context of weakening economic growth, despite the massive Inflation Reduction Act spending bill,

And that all this unprecedented fiscal stimulus was being financed mostly with short term debt.

Pilkington's description of the Biden Administration (and other Western liberals) as "arsonists in the lifeboat" seems increasingly apt. 

About That Short Term Debt

One gets the sense that at some point within the next year or so, the U.S. government may have trouble rolling over its Treasury Bills at reasonable yields, and markets will react poorly. In light of that, the hedged investing approach we wrote about earlier this week may be worth a second look, particularly as it has been crushing the market recently. 

We know there's a tendency to be dismissive when a contributor suggests any investing approach other than stacking physical metals, but those of you with an open mind should click the image above and read that post. Any approach that can protect you when the crap hits the fan--and also outperform before the crap gets there--is worth careful consideration, in our view.

So far, hedged portfolios in two consecutive weeks more than doubled the performance of the market. We'll know tonight how well the next week's hedged portfolios did. 

If you want to stay in touch.

You can follow Niccolo Soldo on X here, and subscribe to his Substack here. 

You can scan for optimal hedges for individual securities, find our current top ten names, and create hedged portfolios on our website. You can also follow Portfolio Armor on X here, or become a free subscriber to our trading Substack using the link below (we're using that for our occasional emails now).