A Bloomberg survey shows 30% of everyday Americans expect the labor market to get worse. Each jump of this magnitude in the past has preceded a recession.

Labor market data is screaming that there’s trouble in the real economy.

Except, of course, the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics – the same government agency that has “revised” away over a million jobs reported as having been created during the Biden administration.

The second half of 2025 opens with fireworks and fog. The markets are still chasing dreams, even as the ground shifts beneath them. Tariffs are more than a tax — they’re a weaponized expression of a new economic order.

Profitless stocks are a signal of excess liquidity, not optimism. And every new announcement from the White House or Truth Social carries ripple effects that touch everything from currencies to commodities to your portfolio.

As an investor, your job isn’t to outguess the next tweet or tariff — it’s to understand what the world’s actually rewarding now, and what it’s quietly punishing.

In that light, cash flows still matter. Real assets still matter. Confidence, liquidity, and political clarity… matter more than ever.

Universal healthcare and “free” (taxpayer-funded) education and the rest of the redistributive voter bribes are ways of spending money, not generating it. Progressive taxation is a means of redistributing wealth, not producing it. The difference is non-trivial.

Countries like Kuwait and Norway are not rich because of their respective governments’ addiction to expensive giveaway programs, whatever one thinks of the merits or alleged compassion of such redistributive policies. They are wealthy despite them.

Down at the other End of the World, meanwhile, president Javier Milei has been busy liberating Argentina’s long-suffering citizens from three-quarters of a century of politicians’ worst laid plans. We’ll have more about the goings on in our adopted home later in the week.