🇺🇸 The FOMC statement this week registered as "materially more hawkish" than December, according to Augur's LLM.

The Fed is in an interesting situation, no? Stocks, ATHs; gold & silver, ATHs; housing, unaffordable; debt across the board, ATHs; trillion dollar deficit; yields, stuck; money supply, ATH; CPI, stuck at 3%; unemployment & difficulty finding a job, rising; bank reserves, precariously depleted; reverse repo facility, same.

There's really no way forward besides beginning the painful process of extricating ourselves from decades of bad policy, starting with the Fed's balance sheet.

Let us hope Warsh actually follows through on that and doesn't Greenspan out...

🦅 I N T E L R U N N E R 🦅

🇺🇸 2030 Re-Apportionment Forecast

Let's say only citizens were counted in the census and thus only eligible voters counted toward the distribution of House seats.

I know, crazy.

We can do this thanks to the 2024 5-Year American Community Survey's citizen population data, released January 29, 2026.

+2: FL, TX
+1: AZ, GA, ID, NC, OH, TN, UT

-1: IL, NJ, RI
-2: NY
-6: CA

So if you're counting at home, then you'll see that's 8 new seats for red states, 1 new seat for purple states, and 9 lost seats for blue states...

You have no idea the degree to which these elections are fake. It's so well beyond Tammany; there is no bottom.

🔠 I N T E L R U N N E R 🔠

🇺🇸 Netflix, Inc. has been having a bad time. It's down 32.8% since October 21st. Something to watch because the move to the downside is starting to look exhausted.

Various phenomena have conspired against them. One is an appearance from Brazil's tyrannical Supreme Court (which is exercising of theory of global projection I don't think any court has yet attempted).

In this case, all the legal experts told $NFLX that direct service payments wouldn't be subject to Brazil's 10% tax on specific outbound payments. Of course they said "it does, and you owe us retroactively back to 2022."

And then voila! $619 million gone.

Then there's all the uncertainty over the competition against Paramount for Warner Bros. I suspect they'll probably get it, but Paramount is engaged in the sort of grotesque thuggery we've come to expect from the Ellison name.

Right now it looks like Netflix has it, but there are intercontinental regulatory hurdles (Europe wants to share our companies), and we'll see if the mafia (Paramount) is able to make any more lowdown moves.

🎥 I N T E L R U N N E R 🎥

🇺🇸 Highest Per Capita Gross National Income (2004 & 2024)

4️⃣ United States of America 🇺🇸 – $83K

🥉 Luxembourg 🇱🇺 – $85K

🥈 Switzerland 🇨🇭 – $95K

🥇 Norway 🇳🇴 – $98K

🔺️ I N T E L R U N N E R 🔺️

🇺🇸 Actual Minus Projected Unemployment by Age

Americans in their twenties are being disproportionately affected by rising unemployment.

Those under 25 are disproportionately unemployed. If they're college-educated, then they're disproportionately unemployed all the way into their early thirties.

We're at the back end of the cycle...

📈 I N T E L R U N N E R 📉

🇵🇱 Poland's GDP growth in 2022-25 (in %), and its structure (contributions in pp)

Healthy growth out of Poland.

May they resist the Euro and the migrant wave forever.

🌫 I N T E L R U N N E R 🌫

🇺🇸 Since Larry Ellison's acquisition of the company, TikTok's uninstall rate is up 150% year over year.

There was mild uninstalling to close last year as well. Many major accounts have joined the trend.

I thought they would get away with it for longer but they couldn't resist introducing a new, extensive privacy policy and a questionnaire about everything from race/ethnicity to immigration status.

I kid you not.

TikTok is doomed. You can't just buy your way to controlling the media any longer. Money is not enough to save you.

There's another new version of Twitter people seem to be migrating to. UpScrolled is #1 for social media in the app stores, but it's based in Australia and just don't see how free speech is possible being there.

That said, might as well check it out—and don't forget Nostr! We're all gonna end up there one day anyway...

📱 I N T E L R U N N E R 📱

🇺🇸 Blackrock is selling Bitcoin & Ethereum like no tomorrow. 300 $BTC, over and over, and thousands of $ETH.

I have a few theories:

1️⃣ The popular theory is that they know something about the financial system or the global economy and we should take this as a warning.

2️⃣ I have long expected them to attempt a serious repricing lower to shake the will of the old whales. I know they want those coins, and we saw their manipulations on the way up.

3️⃣ Outside theory: Blackrock is making a play for the Fed Chair position they lost. Sending the markets are rattled by the selection of a monetarist, Blackrock is seeking to aid their deposed favorite, Rick Rieder, by creating chaos and then selling it to Trump as a preview of Warsh.

God knows he's sensitive about the markets. Like most Presidents lately, it's about all he has going.

💰 I N T E L R U N N E R 💸

🇺🇸 Oof. Good thing we shaved 15.67% off gold's price and 35.5% off silver to end the month.

I'm sure chopping the tops of those monthly candles saved someone's ass.

Meanwhile there's a delivery crisis in China and the Shanghai exchange still has prices over $5K/oz.

Interesting times...

🥇 I N T E L R U N N E R 🥈

🇺🇸 The Rolex Price Index is up 6.9% year over year.

It's exactly where it was 2 years ago and 2.2% higher than 5 years ago.

It's never really recovered from Roaring 2021, and with the effects of inflation, I would imagine the number of people aspiring to buy these has dropped as well.

🎁 I N T E L R U N N E R 🎁

🇺🇸 AI's Growing Demand on American Energy

⚡️ Electricity consumption at U.S. data centers projected to more than double by 2030

🏗 U.S. data center spending nears that of office construction.

⚡️ U.S. household electricity costs continue to rise.

💻 I N T E L R U N N E R 💻

🌍 The Global Returns Leaderboard for the month of January 2026:

🥉 Commodities 🌟 (+10.4%)

🥈 Silver 🥈 (+11.6%)

🥇 WTI Crude Oil 🛢 (+14.3%)

🔽 Ethereum 💰 (-17.4%), Bitcoin 💰 (-10.0%), Dixie 💲 (-1.2%)

Did someone say crude oil?

🔼 I N T E L R U N N E R 🔽

🌍 AI Adoption by Country

◽️South Korea is ChatGPT's second-largest market by subscribers.

◽️The UAE and Singapore lead Al adoption, followed by Norway, Ireland, and France.

◽️The U.S. ranks 24th in adoption, despite being the leader in Al models.

⚡️ I N T E L R U N N E R ⚡️

🇪🇺 EU gas storage tighter than usual (% full)

🔥 I N T E L R U N N E R 🔥

🇺🇸 The ISM Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) jumped 52.6% in January.

It's straight into expansion territory. We highlighted the implications for Bitcoin (and other assets) last Thursday.

📈 I N T E L R U N N E R 📈

🇺🇸 The Median Age of Each State

Maine is old!

🇺🇸 I N T E L R U N N E R 🇺🇸

🇺🇸 The median age of American home buyers is 59.

If you break that down, you get a median age of 40 for first-time home buyers, another new record.

Repeat buyers average a median of 62.

If the problem is the houses are too expensive for most people, how is driving prices higher to drive mortgage rates lower intelligent?

🏚 I N T E L R U N N E R 🏚

🇺🇸 CME Odds of March rate cut by the Fed are now at 11%.

🦅 I N T E L R U N N E R 🦅