Markets are in sell-off mode ahead of today’s opening for a simple reason. You’ll need a scorecard to separate signal from noise. So, let’s line ’em up, shall we?

Trump vs. Powell

Began developing Friday when the Fed was served subpoenas over – at least ostensibly – the $2.3 billion renovation plans for Fed buildings.  Where this escalated was a rare Sunday news video from Jerome Powell who is now in Trump’s sights for a criminal probe.  Have a listen here: Federal Reserve on X: “Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell.

A bit more background is found in a Time report: What to Know About the Investigation Into Jerome Powell | TIME.

What ties all of our threads into a Trump vs. Everyone framing is that none of this is pure ideology so much as control surfaces. The Federal Reserve, sanctioned states, energy choke points, and currency systems are all levers in the same global machine. When those levers move at once, markets don’t see “news” — they see stress in the plumbing.

How stressed?  Well the early Dow futures were down 350, the S&P down 42, while the NASDAQ was eyeing more than 200 down.

Sure – seems like a lot if the coffee hasn’t hit yet – but the reality is that’s less than the rally Friday tacked on – so not the end of the world.  At least, not yet.

Trump vs. Iran (and World)

Here’s a Trump play that’s even harder to understand without reading between the lines.  Yes, there have been demonstrations against the hardline government in Tehran.  As you could predict, US Looking at ‘Some Very Strong Options’ – Trump Warns Iran as Protests Escalate.

But here’s the part that gives it away.  Trump says weighing tough response to Iran crackdown, says Tehran called to negotiate,  But, with whom and about what?  The demonstrations don’t – for now – involve U.S. actions:

The unrest in Iran began in late December as a deepening economic crisis, fueled by crushing inflation, skyrocketing food and fuel costs, and a dramatic collapse in the value of the rial that has eroded living standards and squeezed ordinary households. What began with bazaar merchants and shopkeepers walking off the job over the plummeting currency and rising prices quickly spread to include university students, workers, and broad swaths of the public, who are no longer simply demanding economic relief but are chanting anti-regime and pro-freedom slogans and calling for political change.

Sure: the demonstrations, now nationwide and in all 31 provinces, reflect not just frustration over cost of living but a crisis of legitimacy — a rejection of longstanding clerical rule and corruption, demands for dignity and human rights, and anger at the political and economic system that has brought Iran to this point of social rupture.

HOWEVER – and this is the key thing – the protests are not about the Iranian nuclear program.

A further point?  You don’t, in effect, negotiate with bystanders. So what 60-years of “news logic” tells me is the odds of the U.S. driving some portion of the protests (via 3-letters, five-eyes, and Tel Aviv) are roughly 113 percent.

Trump vs. Cuba

Cuba fits the same template, though with a longer fuse. Going back to Fidel, Bay of Pigs, Missile Crisis in ’62 -pain in the American ass.  Why go hot now?  Because not just Russia would look at Cuba for field position – so would China.

There’s also a whiff of the “Iran Playbook” is you inspect closely: Recent protests there have centered on blackouts, food scarcity, and the collapse of the peso, not ideology. People aren’t marching over Marx versus markets; they’re marching because refrigerators are empty and lights go out.

Yet Washington’s posture toward Havana is again hardening, as we read, Trump vows to cut off Cuba’s oil after toppling Venezuelan ally Maduro.

Trump’s Asymmetric Moment

Trump’s like the kid in the schoolyard; surrounded, he’s trying to “take the first punch” at everyone.

Thing is, in systems theory, asymmetries can be momentary.  So where’s a checklist of things to keep an eye on:

Three Sources of Concern

The first is that Iran may have sleeper cells in the U.S.  As we all know, the Mexico border leaked like a sieve under both parties for decades.  We have no doubt that “domestic terrorism” is just ahead and probably just a matter of time on target.  The nightmare return reading headlines like Chaos erupts as U-Haul drives into crowd during anti-Iranian regime rally in Westwood (L.A.). Reading stories like this you have to wonder “Accident, provocation, or opening salvo?”

The next gitter point is resource pricing.  Gold and silver were both a lot stronger today.  They always rise during uncertainty, but we’re moving north of that now. Gold, silver prices hit all-time highs amid geopolitical tensions.  Yeah, this is the stuff that can survive EMP.

Our third arhythmia is the event-chain that could start tomorrow on inflation dope.  Consumer prices – the inflation report – will land with inestimable impact.  If inflation is strong (which we expect) then the Fed Meeting at the end of the month ( Jan. 27th-28th) might not lower rates.  And tell me what would happen if the Fed actually raised rates?

Trump needs a whipping boy – and looks like Powell is it.  Expect Trumpian narrative engineering to accuse the Fed of partisanship. But ask anyone with an economics degree or street smarts, and they are likely to admit Tariffs are just a one-step-removed Sales Tax on Imports.

Which combines (along with other factors we’ll get into in Wednesday’s Peoplenomics report) to drive down West Coast port activity.

From Trump’s view,syphoning some of the cream off the west coast economy may be acceptable – he’s managing a likely Newsom run and not trying to line the pockets of the “retired railroader” in Omaha.

My strategy for today? Besides being an old man with a nappy cold and cough?

Watch the price of the metals. And hope that tomorrow’s scope of study won’t be pushed even wider by events to come.

Around the Ranch: PBTM

“Personal, Brutal, Time-Management.”

Mr. Ure’s “drug cocktail” continues as the first cold in at least five-years is beginning to ease its grip.  Here’s a curious thing:  Son G2 – off being medical lead on a MSFT server farm build or two somewhere up in Yankee country – has been hit with the same miserable cold, too. Not COVID and neither of the flu’s, but gnarly and useless as they come.  An odd co-inkydink, for sure.

One trick a learned long ago?  Even when your body feels like crap, the brain can still be driven to some effect. This is why there is a special “double report” on Peoplenomics this week.  And it figured into my latestramble on my AI research website: A Hidden Guild Response: On the “Plausibility Gap”.

This article – and the First Monday report that spawned it – as fascinating studies if a recurring problem with new technologies:  Existing socioeconomic powers always grab for control over tech.  This isn’t anything new – goes back to the birth of obscene phone calls when landlines were still being strung.  It continued in US v. Pacifica (1978) – which as every old news director know, is where the FCC’s “naughty seven words” came from.

More recently, we saw power change hands between Jack the Twitter versus X-Elon.

As you’ll read in the paper, the frontier of control (especially of ‘the narrative’) rests with whether a “a central authority” should declare what a “conspiracy theory” is (via AI implementations) or whether – my own Shared Framework Experience direction (where users set their own sensitivity thresholds) isn’t more beneficial to wide-ranging cross-domain research.

This doesn’t seem like a big deal – except it really is. 

Do we want another ginned-up “false consensus” channel run by the next generation of “Jack in the boxes?”  I don’t think so.  When you get to be old and cranky – with a cold – your tolerance for central authority bullshit thins and you want to do something about it while stumbling for the exit.

Like it or not;l A.I. is here and the (typically liberal) academics are yammering about ownership of central truth.  Um, no.

There’s a simple way to allow AI users to extend use of their own Mind Amplifiers wherever it leads them.  Explained in my paper Refining the AI–Human SFE Model (and Why It Matters) – Hidden Guild.  It’s really like you can now pick “themes” for your web browser, dark theme, summer, and all that.  Essentially, users should be able to use (or skin) AI for their preferences.

It’s very much like the James Dale Davidson,  William Rees-Mogg et al choice between actual freedom and being force-fed by a Nannhy State.  Ask Maduro how that worked out.

(If you saved $50,000 by skipping B-school? Davidson and Rees-Mogg did not coin the term nanny state, but they popularized and systematized it in a socioeconomic and geopolitical framework, especially in their books The Great Reckoning (1997), and The Sovereign Individual (1997).

They used “nanny state” to describe late-industrial governments that:

• tax heavily,
• regulate behavior,
• promise cradle-to-grave security,
• and become brittle as technology erodes their revenue base.

Kinda like…oh, you know…NOW.

Which is – sad to say – what the battle for control of AI freedom is all about. Thankfully, I can still pick a high-contrast theme in a web browser and I should be able to tell AI my research preferences in like manner.  This is what cross-domain extensibility looks like.

Write when when I stop coughing,

[email protected]