Unf*cking The Republic

This week we diagnosed the economy as a giant zit—good numbers on the surface, all of it concentrated in AI investment and stock market gains for the top 10%, while wages fall below inflation, consumer confidence hits a 12-year low, and the 10-year Treasury just blew past its 2007 peak. Then we looked at what the pop actually looks like: a private credit unwind that drags the banks with it,...

Private credit headlines have calmed down in recent months. It could be because these debt markets are doing just fine...or it could be because we’re too distracted by wars, exploding bond yields, and gas prices. But just because there haven’t been high-profile bankruptcies like last year’s First Brands or Tricolor doesn’t mean there isn’t trouble brewing in the opaqu...

Max and 99 are back for another round of Omnibus. They hit headlines on the Paramount-Warner merger as a preview of what oligarchs do when anyone tries to govern them, plastic fusing with coral reefs in a new phenomenon researchers are calling “plasticoral,” and rapid third-country deportations getting the Supreme Court’s temporary blessing. Then they tackle listener emails on wh...

Despite only having between 95,000 and 120,000 members nationwide, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has a hot political hand. To most Americans the DSA remains a mystery, but its impact is being felt in elections throughout the country. Conservatives are keeping one eye open but are largely dismissive. Establishment liberals are furious with the group. This episode puts the DSA in histor...

An original episode on how Trump will ultimately represent the final chapter of the American experiment. Empires don’t collapse. They crumble. But they’re reduced to a handful of chapters in history texts that depict them in stages with defined beginnings and ends. Donald Trump has already managed to set the stage for World War Three though it looks far different than prior great wars....

Max and 99 are back for another round of Omnibus. They hit headlines on Carney’s airport privatization sellout and the Ebola outbreak in the DRC that’s on pace to be the worst the world has ever seen. Then they tackle listener emails on AI recursive self-improvement hype and the TESCREAL cult behind it, Greenland’s surrender of sovereignty to Trump, and why “regulation&rdqu...

The CLARITY Act (Digital Asset Market Clarity Act) failed to pass cloture and won’t be taken up on the Senate floor. This is very, very good news. Despite attempts until the last minute by New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand—a Democrat who is closely associated with the crypto lobby—not a single one of her colleagues came over to her side. So even she voted “no” to ad...

This week we put a proper endcap on the summer’s debt discussions—the $40 trillion number is real, but the conversation around it is almost entirely dishonest, designed to make cuts to grandma’s Medicare seem inevitable while military spending and corporate tax rates never even make the list. Then we looked at the housing market, where sellers are quietly stuffing concessions int...

The Producer Price Index (PPI) dropped and it was worse than expected. PPI is the measure of inflation building in the system and economists use it to forecast what consumer inflation will look like three to four months down the road. If these figures are any indication, inflation is about to hit the global economy like a tsunami and no amount of hand wringing and interest rate tweaking at the Fed...

Max and 99 are back for another episode of Omnibus. They cover headlines on Israel killing a family of 12 in Lebanon including six children, and a new Elon Musk documentary alongside a fall movie season tackling Big Tech and its leaders. Then they tackle listener emails on childcare costs and the dependent care tax cap, Pete Buttigieg criticism, expanding Medicare versus a VA-style system, and whe...

Scott Bessent can’t do anything right. He just announced a paltry bond buyback that fell flat with the market responding by pushing rates higher. Bessent also proclaimed that he is “the house” and that people shouldn’t bet against him because he has inside information about what the Bank of Japan is going to do. Interesting. The guy doesn’t know what our central bank...

This week we dissected JD Vance’s child care rule change: A Heritage Foundation tradwife policy dressed up as family values, funded by gutting support for the single working parents who actually need it. Then Nathan Robinson joined us to talk about why the socialist moment is real and the DSA keeps winning where it’s not supposed to. And in honor of Labor Day, we put the wage-price spi...

Trump administration official Kevin Hassett declared the latest jobs report as a “present to the American people” for Labor Day. Really, Kevin? Let’s dig into this claim by looking closely at the labor data. What you’ll find is that more Americans than ever are dislocated from the full-time employment picture in this country, and that this administration has zero idea how t...

Max and 99 are back for another round of Omnibus. They hit headlines on the White House’s Venezuelan oil deal and the money launderer at its center, the Pentagon rolling out its own versions of ChatGPT and Grok, and a Gloria Steinem mantra. Then they tackle listener emails on what drives career politicians to serve billionaires, taxpayer exposure on the Venezuela oil deal, and Reagan’s...

The United States doesn’t have a comprehensive healthcare “system.” It has a patchwork of coverage options that come with heavy price tags and complicated processes. Consistent GOP attacks have made the entire framework untenable, and the results speak for themselves. Healthcare coverage is deteriorating rapidly under Trump and there’s no going back at this point. This migh...

Ronald Reagan. Champion of neoliberalism. To some, the man who lifted the spirits of a nation and restored a sense of pride and optimism after a period of despair. To others, the Reagan years marked the death of liberalism. A dark turn toward unfettered capitalist exploitation and the decapitation of working class movements and civil rights. So, which is it? Was Ronald Reagan responsible for usher...

This week we tore apart The Heritage Foundation’s spin on the Venezuela oil deal—the “world’s gas station” line slogan, the math on what Venezuela gets back is embarrassing, and what’s really happening is a century-old colonial playbook dressed up in PR language. Then we looked at a Pew chart: global favorability of the U.S. just dropped below China’s for...

Max and 99 are back for another round of Omnibus. They hit headlines on John Roberts’ 40-year project to kill the Voting Rights Act and Spirit Airlines selling decades of flight attendant data to Google to train AI. Then they tackle listener emails on wage labor as a central issue, whether UNFTR is a GRU op (lol), and tech bros engineering technocratic feudalism. Enjoy! Chapters Intro: 00:00...

This week we staged an intervention for Scott Bessent—the failed hedge fund manager who lost 90% of his assets during the greatest bull run in history and is now the most interventionist Treasury Secretary in decades, scoring own goals in the bond market, undermining the new Fed chair, and threatening Iran with sanctions while refusing to answer a single question about China. Then we checked...

Billionaires are easy to hate. And there are several efforts underway to get them to pay their “fair share.” In this episode, Max argues that focusing on taxing billionaires is the wrong discussion and distracts from attaining the tax policy we truly need. Instead of focusing on the individual billionaires, focus on preventing individuals from becoming billionaires. The real story is c...

Max and 99 are back for another Omnibus. They hit headlines on Tether, the $200 billion crypto company nobody can see inside, and a food safety traceability rule that’s stalled for 15 years. Then they tackle listener emails on Flock cameras doing far more than license plate reading, whether the broligarchy can dump the economic damage on the next Democratic president, and what happens to the...

This week we named what’s actually happening to the American economy—Corporate Colonialism, the full realization of the Powell Memo’s 50-year project to hand the keys of democracy to the boardroom—and made the case that the real fight isn’t Trump, it’s the day after Trump. Then we got into the AI financing structures that are starting to look uncomfortably famil...

Max and 99 are back in action, (though IRL, Max is still on vacay!). They hit headlines on MAHA’s fault lines, Flock cameras tracking cars, the world’s most prolific Wikipedia editor, and OpenAI flying influencers to a luxury nature retreat. Then they tackle listener emails on the difference between socialism/communism/and fascism, and an Elon musk sycophant. Enjoy! Chapters Intro: 00:...

The AI trade might have found its canary in the coal mine. Leopold Aschenbrenner—a 25-year-old former OpenAI researcher built Situational Awareness into one of the hottest funds on Wall Street by betting long on the construction and infrastructure side of AI (Micron, CoreWeave) and short on the chips and software everyone else was chasing (Nvidia, Broadcom, Oracle). Then July happened, prime...

This is one of those, get it off the chest episodes. A straightforward conversation about three slow moving disasters that threaten our way of life. Climate change, artificial intelligence and the Democratic Party. Obviously, that last one requires a bit of an explanation. This is that explanation. Resources United States Courts: Bankruptcies Rise 12.2 Percent Book Love Abdul El-Sayed + Micah John...