TL;DR: Markets may rally briefly, but Fed rate cuts won’t fix the long slide in U.S. manufacturing. IPO hype won’t close the China gap. Learning collectives could.

Modest Rally – But Then?

We anticipate a modest rally today. Not likely to last, though. That’s because a week from Wednesday the Fed will likely drop rates a bit.  Maybe a quarter, possibly a half.

Either way, it will be wrong.

See, American manufacturing jobs have been in free-fall since 1992, or so.  The “big crossover” was around 1998 – that’s when things went from bad to worse.

Going into the recession 1990-1991, America had about 18-million people employed in Manufacturing.  Today, that number (green above) is just over 12-million.  Industrial production, meanwhile, rose about 56 percent on an indexed scale, topping 100 percent – knocked back by COVID-19, but coming on fast.  In our view, too fast.

When you crank in population change, it’s even worse. For context, the employment-to-population ratio reached a record high of 64.7% in April 2000 and a record low of 51.2% in April 2020 during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

As should be clear, the Fed FOMC has two ways to look at rates now:  In one scenario, we roll with lower rates – anticipating an AI bubble – like the Internet Bubble 1999-2000, and that will be “good for business.  If a collapse happens – as it did during the Internet Bubble burst, what looks in retrospect like “a mass-hiring event” (9/11) might be coincidentally-timed to take the heat.  In the end, the rich will get richer and the poor?  Well, must be their own fault, right?

The other side is more convincing to us:  We already know there’s a list of “hot IPOs in the wings.” This fall’s IPO calendar is stacked with names across fintech, crypto, tech, and consumer brands—Klarna is lining up a New York debut aiming for a $14 billion valuation, Via Transportation is pitching a $3.5 billion transit-tech raise, blockchain lender Figure and crypto exchange Gemini are both set for Nasdaq listings, energy-services firm Legence is targeting a $700 million haul, and Black Rock Coffee Bar is brewing a near-$900 million offering—altogether signaling a broad reopening of the IPO market with billions in play.

We’re pretty sure none of these will come anywhere near closing the gap between Chinese manufacturing and how America has fallen behind.  Clearly, the Fed has to place a bet – the word “judgment” will no doubt be bandied about, but let’s call it what it is.

We don’t need more drivers and baristas.  We need factories.  To us? With memories still intact?  Arthur Laffer’s trickle-down economics argues that cutting taxes on businesses and the wealthy spurs investment and growth that eventually benefits the broader economy.  Seems to us the Administration’s still pushing “Laffer-bull” economics.

A little rally today?  Maybe.  Bank Settlement Day Wednesday.  But the crystal ball hints Thursday’s Consumer Prices Report will come in stronger than wish-n-whispers.  That will drive the market down ahead of the Fed. Which will likely lower anyway.

Politics being what it is: power that insulates the citizens who ceded it.  We may not have factories, but by-God we have fairytales.

Futures Whispering

Gold early was trying to pop back today – after a smooth drop for the charts last week.  That’s just one of the indicators of future.

We really like the FinViz.com presentation board as a before-the-open cheat sheet.

We like looking at the numbers and going through the “self-talk” – building a trader’s narrative which balances news versus the reality of cash.  Take today, for example:

“Hmm…lumber isn’t popping – so whatever the Fed does isn’t likely to turn on home building in a big way.  Good time to get that new deck built?  Oil’s still holding, but firm – so maybe that’s whispering about inflation numbers to come.  You know, with gold holding…yeah.  Copper? Under $5 bucks – that rolls with sluggish home building (wire needs) and quiet, for now, on the “wars involving the West in a back way” front…”

You, of course, get to roll your own. But it helps to take some of the edge off.

Press Coaster Headlines!

Hang on, buddy – this won’t hurt…much…

The Good news? Not just Mexican workers being targeted.  The bad? South Korea to fly detained workers back as US vows more raids on employers,

So, you thought gold was a slow game before? Carlos Alcaraz wins his 2nd U.S. Open at match delayed by Trump’s attendance .

War Notes: European leaders to visit US to discuss ending Ukraine war, says Trump.

Roping China into the Euro-War? Is this the smoking gun footage that PROVES China’s role in Ukraine war? Bombshell drone vid reveals Chinese ‘factory’.

Hows that real estate/land clearing project? Still slow? Israel Warns Hamas to Surrender or Face ‘Annihilation’.

Wait…You mean divorcing for dollars may go out of style??? Divorce Plunged in Kentucky. Equal Custody for Fathers Is a Big Reason Why. – WSJ.  (Remember, I lost a cool mill in RE equality from the Big D years back…so we do watch the front lines.)

What Monday is complete without more dismal news on vaccine lies and misdirection? THE MASSIVE COVID VACCINE DECEPTION – The Burning Platform

PLUS: we have the low-down on the blow-down, of course:

The Day On Deck:

• Consumer Debt report due out an hour before the close today.  If this key Fed number is weak, it might spin the markets one way, or the other.  Remember, if the consumer starts to “vote with their wallet” politicians begin to remember who put them in office.  Odd how that works…
• Bank Settlement Day Wednesday:  Plan extra Maalox a day or so either side of it. Great time to be looking at left field (for events).

Around the Ranch: Learning Collectives – An Alt. to AI?

Say you don’t like AI?  Afraid are you?  Or, are you just holding on to living in the dark?

Humans already have a workable alternative to AI and it is hiding in plain sight. Call them learning collectives. These are groups of people who gather online in a purposeful way to solve both the world’s problems and their own. The difference between this and the current landscape of social media is the intent. Streaming video devolved into porn-land, and platforms like Facebook or X turned into hangouts for whiners and dopamine junkies. They are tools of distraction rather than collaboration.

The core idea of a learning collective is to reclaim those same digital pipes and redirect them toward coordinated problem-solving. It doesn’t require new tech—Zoom, comment sections, even Discord servers are enough. What matters is building an environment where insight is shared, curated, and applied rather than drowned in noise.

Our own comments section is a half-step in this direction. It proves that even in a modest format, real collaboration can surface.

Take “Out of Work Steve,” who recently dropped a gem of cultural diagnosis. He reminded us that Iron Eyes Cody, the “crying Indian” from the 1970s pollution PSA, was not a Native American at all but an Italian-American actor who lived his whole career behind a false mask. The fact that this symbol of American conscience was itself a scam tells you a lot about where we live. Steve pushed the point further with the modern example of Publishers Clearing House. Oregonians won “$5,000 a week forever,” only to watch the company go bankrupt and erase those promises. Bankruptcy records now show at least ten winners may never collect millions they were led to believe was guaranteed. Scam Nation, right there in black and white.

A learning collective would not just share such stories. It would analyze the patterns underneath them. Why do scams flourish? How does advertising colonize conscience? What makes people fall for promises of “forever money”?

Once you have a critical mass of voices, the collective begins to function as a distributed brain. It can spot blind spots, connect historical dots, and propose countermeasures. That’s where the human edge lies. AI is good at pattern-matching within a box, but collectives can change the box itself. They can call BS on a false narrative, reveal hidden motives, and generate strategies that are rooted in lived experience. The wisdom of crowds is not automatic, though—it takes cultivation. You need moderators, context, and a willingness to push beyond entertainment.

Historical Learning Collectives Aren’t “New”

History shows that learning collectives are not new—they’ve just been institutionalized under banners like government, religion, or empire. The Athenian agora functioned as a collective where citizens debated policy, law, and philosophy, shaping the earliest experiments in democracy.

Medieval monasteries became learning engines, copying texts, preserving knowledge, and exchanging agricultural and medical insights across Europe. The Islamic Golden Age revolved around Baghdad’s House of Wisdom, where scholars pooled knowledge from Greek, Persian, Indian, and Chinese sources to advance science and mathematics.

Even empires understood the leverage: Rome built roads not just for legions but for moving ideas, while China’s dynastic courts institutionalized collective scholarship in civil service exams. These were all proto-learning collectives, but they were tightly ensconced within hierarchies of power—sustained by political authority, clerical structures, or imperial might.

What’s different today is the possibility of forming them outside those gatekeepers, using the same networks that usually sell us scams and distractions.

Carpe Diem for Learning Collectives?

If humanity wants to keep its seat at the table, additional input and control while building out more collaboration with AI – like I write about on the Hidden Guild website – learning collectives are the way.

They are cheaper than AI, more transparent than algorithms, and—done right—more creative.

The challenge is cultural. We need to steer our digital lives away from passive consumption and toward active engagement.

A world of scammy distractions has lulled us into thinking the only options are to be amused, outraged, or sold to. But when people assemble with intent, even in a simple comment thread, something different happens. New ideas surface, hidden truths get validated, and solutions start to form. That is not a dream; it’s a design choice. The alternative to AI doesn’t need to be built. It already exists in us—waiting to be used.

We’d sure like the web protected so that more “learning collectives” could spring up.  Software that would better facilitate research and public consensus-building. Outside of the (scammy) political processes and the marketing-oriented “special people.”

Thinking more like small public think tanks – and maybe with the same immunity from lawsuits that Social Media has grabbed.

Oh, wait…that can’t happen?  AI is a hot-new monetization and social media is a lash on the backs of working people to lead them where the meme bosses (intel and political class) want.

Yeah, forget I mentioned it. Living in the dark is so much less work, right?

Wine Time Outlook

By know, you may know that Elaine and I pause every afternoon at 4 PM sharp for a glass of wine, or an ice-cold beer.  Three days a week we also have my buddy The Major on speakerphone.  Today’s “field report” should be special.  Because the Major got to spend some time this weekend with Jerry Boykin.  Not familiar? William Gerald “Jerry” Boykin  was the head of Delta Force for 13-years.  As President G.W. Bush’s undersecretary of defense for intelligence, there are probably few people alive who have clear-cut vision on “where America’s at.”

This weekend, Boykin was speaking at a church up in the Gig Harbor area west of Tacoma, WA.  Looking forward to the HUMINT on this and if able, I’ll pass along anything useful.  Wine time is prime time around here.

ShopTalk Sunday is here if you missed it.  New paper on the Mind Amplifiers website and one on the Hidden Guild site, as well.  Yes, the old man’s been busy on the keys…

Scribe when you get rich,

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