7 Key Developments To Know About This Week
220: Government Overreach, Dying Liberty, Blatant Corruption
Some weeks I just remain amazed at the sheer insanity and absurdity of the events transpiring around us and this is one of those weeks. Our overview of Africa on the geopolitical and macroeconomic front has been delayed and pushed to next Monday and will be free for all subscribers.
Today however — there are simply too many political, economic, and geopolitical developments to ignore and not provide more context on.
It’s become highly unpopular in the media, at work, in day to day life to call things the way they are. Being a critical thinker or not being eager to gobble up mainstream talking points is looked down on — you’re not supposed to question the things you’re being told, you’re being expected to take them at face value and be a good little boy.
Political correctness, woke politics, and disingenuous narratives have seized the data, information, and intelligence that we get daily. If it isn’t clear by now the influencers, personalities, companies, and organizations that get labeled extremist or conspiracy based are the ones you should be paying attention to.
After all — nearly every “conspiracy theory” or fact deemed inaccurate by “fact checkers” has ended up coming true.
Today we will walk through a list of 7 economic, political, and geopolitical developments everyone should be aware of in order to gain the best perspective possible on how things are trending in the US and across the world in the short term.
If you’re new to Arb Letter - welcome. The goal of this publication and community is to provide straightforward commentary and insights on political, economic, and geopolitical news across the world — working to identify the most valuable takeaways to inform decision making and opinions.
“Pure madness, the Culture more animal than man now, as if stricken by rabies.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo
1 - Worsening Economic Front
We covered it in our post earlier this week but the bleak reality is that economic conditions in this country have not gotten better for the average person — they’ve gotten much worse.
Think about all of the entry level college grads and people under 25 in this country who make decent wages. They will NOT be able to afford homes like their parents did without assistance, given they simply cannot save up enough initial capital to make the math make sense with mortgage payments and the initial down payment.
Furthermore — over the life of that loan/mortgage folks are goin g to end up paying an obscene amount in interest alone.
It would take some combination of up to a 28% decline in home prices, a more than 4% reduction in 30-year mortgage rates, or up to a 60% growth in median household incomes to bring home affordability back to its 25-year average, per Black Knight (Unusual Whales). On top of that the average interest rate on a 30-year mortgage rises to 7.62%, the highest since 2000 (Kobeissi Letter).
Think about that for a second.
Despite the dismissive and misleading headlines put out by major financial media companies and talking heads the situation is objectively dire on the ground for the average citizen.
Remember — September is historically one of the worst months for stocks all year.
Why This Matters For You:
Economic conditions and high costs are not going to magically get better overnight — financing everything from a car to a home has become out of reach for most people. Consider some of the tips covered in Recession-Proof Your Finances to help counteract the broader trends we are seeing hurt people’s financial health. More and more people — even those who are earning $150K+ are beginning to feel the impact of student loans resuming, costs soaring, and day to day expenses adding up. The aforementioned guide gives you ways to save more money, cut back where reasonable, and work towards more income to persevere through bad financial times and volatility in markets.
2 - Political Targeting/Weaponization of Federal Government
This week we saw the continuation of a troubling trend related to government overreach in the form of new FBI raids and an interesting response by a company that is supposed to provide security — not defeat it.
Liberty Safes a prominent company that manufactures gun safes in the US — actually provided the FBI with backdoor access to one of their customers safes, destroying the trust of the firearms community overnight resulting in a mountain of backlash on Twitter to the point the company locked comments on it’s apology post.
Nathan Hughes, a 34-year-old individual who possessed a Liberty firearms vault, was apprehended at gunpoint by the FBI and officially accused last week of a single felony and three minor offenses connected to his being inside the U.S. Capitol structure on January 6, 2021.
In short — the FBI went directly to Liberty Safes and demanded that the backdoor be given.