Most moms and pops strive to place their kiddos on a team of some sort. Those who focus on the kids’ abilities rather than trying to relive their own glory days through their offspring don’t care what kind of team it is—perhaps football, debate, chess, or swimming. They offer different opportunities, but teamwork is an immensely valuable skill in itself.
Team experience builds skills of various kinds: social, technical, goal setting and reaching, problem solving, give and take in an environment of purposeful action, leadership, followship, complementarity, mutual support, others awareness, self-denial, forgiveness, encouragement, and much more. Kids who learn these things have a leg up on kids who don’t when it comes to job success, as well as success in other group endeavors (e.g., church, civic organizations, politics).
That’s the positive side of teamwork, and that side is immense, worthwhile, and very much to be encouraged. People in general are far better off for having team experiences and learning teamwork-related skills. However, there is a dark side to teams.
You’ll recognize it immediately if it’s termed “polarization.” Teams polarize. This can be charming, humorous, entertaining, or extremely dangerous, depending on the situation to which it pertains.
It can be pretty funny viewing your kid’s tee-ball game. The kids are cute, the skill level low, the antics hilarious, and the competition limited. Viewing the crowd at an NFL game can also be funny and entertaining, but it occasionally gets dangerous. At a minimum, it causes most fans to see every penalty against their team as wrong and every one against the opposing team as right.
In other words, it affects their objectivity. Once teams are drawn up and begin to oppose one another, huge swaths of complexity and nuance fall by the wayside. Everything devolves into me vs. thee.
Dante observed, and MLK Jr. echoed, that, “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” Many, if not most, people would agree with that statement. But let’s dig a little deeper.
After the 9/11 attacks, then-President George W. Bush said in an address to a joint session of Congress, “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Fairly obviously, this is just a practical application of Dante’s dictum.
Western nations fell in line behind the President, and a long, costly, bloody fiasco in pursuit of a poorly defined goal resulted. In retrospect, it would have been highly beneficial to the world, and even to America, if a lot more people would have remained neutral and analytical. In fact, had they just said no, they could have exposed the false dilemma they had been presented. They could easily have fought terrorism more efficaciously than by a half-baked, poorly informed, naively pursued full-scale invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Not every polarization is wrong, of course. Sometimes a matter actually is one of complete right against complete wrong. A certain small hill called Calvary outside of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago comes to mind. But most of the time when we think a matter is black and white, it really turns out to be shades of gray when more time and effort is taken to understand it.
These comments are offered in the context of what’s going on in Washington now. The Republican team is in the ascendancy; the Democrats on the wane. That will change some day, but it’s the way it is now. Given the goals each side has pledged itself to, this author is thrilled with the way this is playing out.
But even this scenario is filled with gray. Many of the Republicans now confirming President Trump’s cabinet nominees are a huge part of the problem. They have long voted their own interests or to avoid controversy. They have enabled the swamp and resisted or not aided its draining.
Democrats willing to fight the good fight might be more rare than Republicans willing to oppose it, but Trump has found several of them: Musk, RFKJ, Gabbard, himself. Clearly, as in modern battle, the lines are not always straight and clear.
All this is to say that while there is much good news these days, the need to remain vigilant and to remain true to unchanging verities rather than teams is paramount. Our heroes will disappoint us; our enemies might surprise us. Let us hold them all to account, by our informed votes at the very least, and make common cause with anyone who will likewise do so.
Key Takeaways:
- The massive move to real assets
- The timing of tariff disruption
- Titan vs. Olympian; who will win?
- Will we finally get meaningful numbers from the BLS?
The McAlvany Weekly Commentary: A Weaker Dollar Is On Trump’s Agenda
After introductory remarks, David and Kevin discuss tariffs. The effects are already being felt, and one of the areas in which that’s true is the influx of gold to the U.S. from Great Britain. This is apparently an attempt to front-run tariffs by moving gold necessary for settlement of futures contracts in the U.S. before such movement will be taxed. “The London Metals Exchange will look like it’s been strip mined if its flows continue at the pace they are now,” notes David. And that demand for gold globally is real. With the changes in the international monetary system being forced by Donald Trump, the central bank interest in gold as an alternative reserve currency continues unabated. His summary statement of the situation ought to get every thoughtful investor’s attention: “Yet another year has passed and the bias toward off-grid assets has been expressed again by the managers of global money supply, and that off-grid is really, really critical.” The hosts then turn to the new President’s apparent intentions with regard to the dollar and American trade with other nations. They discuss a concept recently introduced by Morgan Lewis in Hard Asset Insights—devaluing the dollar vis-à-vis other currencies to increase American manufacturing competitiveness. This has ramifications far beyond manufacturing, which the hosts explore. From there they return to finance and the role of interest rates—familiar territory for regular listeners to the podcast. For years, David has explored and explained the unsung role of interest rates in building and destroying empires and lesser fiefdoms, as well as indicating their health. Now, in America and across the world, their role is that of a lion in the back seat of a Volkswagen Bug. Not always seen, perhaps, but unwise in the extreme to ignore.
Credit Bubble Bulletin: Declaring the Reciprocal Tariff Regime
As President Trump launches his reciprocal trade program, matching other nations’ direct and indirect markups on American goods with tariffs on their goods selling in America, the world press has erupted in a cacophony of voices pro, con, …and just loud. Making sense of the melee is difficult. It calls for a master compiler and curator of complex information. As it happens, Credit Bubble Bulletin features one of the very best—someone who has done precisely this for over three decades. Doug looks not only at what is likely to happen, but when. “It’s difficult for me to see a scenario where the administration’s new tariff regime is not highly disruptive. But it’s unlikely to be immediate. For now, a somewhat weaker dollar has taken pressure off the weak-link global ‘periphery.’” He then notes extraordinary activity in European equities in prelude to this characteristic notation, “When I see such market inflation and risk embracement in the face of deteriorating fundamentals, my focus turns to identifying the underlying dynamics fueling the rally.” His analysis in this pursuit is wide-ranging and on point. And given the starring role liquidity has in both our global economy and its present precarious situation, this statement is telling and ominous: “Global market liquidity has turned highly unstable.” You simply have to read the post to get its immense worth. Don’t miss it.
Hard Asset Insights: Thinking Very Big
Morgan notes this week that inflation appears to be raising its ugly head again. Both the CPI and PPI indicated upticks in the insidious phenomenon. However, while this was somewhat troubling for Fed Chair Powell, President Trump called for what we might call more hair of the dog. Lower rates and a lower dollar are ostensibly part of his plan, as Morgan has laid out in previous letters, so Trump is pressing for them. “Interest rates should be lowered,” were his concise words, even as Powell countervailingly contended, “I would say we’re close, but not there on inflation…so we want to keep policy restrictive for now.” If this is a battle of Titans, the older Trump might ironically be the younger Olympian in the metaphor—Powell and the old order defending Olympus in the old way and visibly struggling for many months now. Morgan puts the matter plainly, “President Trump’s urging for lower rates this week is a strong indication that this administration has made up it’s mind. It seems very likely to use policy measures—perhaps radical policy measures—to attempt to address the fiscal problem and other structural issues facing the U.S., even at the cost of running inflation hot.” Morgan continues to be on the leading edge of analysis of Trump’s new regime and way of doing things. For analysis central to your life and investments, don’t miss his weekly missives.
Golden Rule Radio: Gold Hits New All-Time Highs
Miles’s recap this week has gold at a new record high, while silver spent the week making much ado about nothing—plenty of Sturm und Drang, to be sure, but not much to show for it in the end. The S&P was down slightly, with the dollar up slightly. Rob mentioned that DOGE is about to start its review of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which Rob hopes means that we’ll finally start to get some true reflections of inflation in the government’s numbers. Truly meaningful indicators of inflation in real people’s lives have been systematically stripped out of BLS computations for years, yielding statistics that minimize government’s failures and gaslight consumers who believe things are worse than the government admits. The hosts then turn to the overall effort the Trump Administration is making to cut government spending and note that it has not yet been truly cut. That doesn’t happen until the new budget is developed and approved. The hosts express some cynicism that such cuts will actually happen, but discuss what it will look like if it does.
