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Ripple Effect

Data So Bad, The Fed Buried It

Loading ...Addison Wiggin

July 28, 2025 • 1 minute, 28 second read


banking systemFedunrealized losses

Data So Bad, The Fed Buried It

The Federal Reserve is sitting on a time bomb…

It has over $468 billion in unrealized losses.

That reflects assets on the balance sheet that are trading for much lower than what the bank paid for them.

Yes, that’s the Fed’s the job as “lender of last resort.” They buy stressed assets, swap them out with higher-quality ones, and then either absorb the loss or wait for prices to improve.

But here’s trouble. The Fed isn’t alone in holding unrealized losses.

The commercial banking system also saw its unrealized losses soar as the Fed started hiking interest rates in 2022. Three of the largest bank failures in US history occurred between March and May 2023.

It got so bad, so quickly, the Fed discontinued the data partway through the year:

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America’s banks were in trouble before the Fed finished hiking interest rates – so much so that
the central bank discontinued reporting the data.

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) – the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history in 2023 – grabbed the most headlines.

SVB had total losses of $16.1 billion alone—nearly 25% of the losses reported in 2022 a year earlier.

Today, with interest rates still relatively high, commercial banks continue to sit on massive losses.

The Fed’s existence is a paradox…

On paper, it’s supposed to smooth out economic cycles.

In reality, it tends to exacerbate them. Each crisis that brews is larger and more far-reaching than the last.

Since the 1987 crash, each crisis—which should be a time to clear out bad debts and start fresh—has been covered up with more and more freshly printed money.

Only this time is different.

The Fed became insolvent for the first time in its history in September 2022.

The crisis is coming to a head.

~ Addison


Autonomous Weapons

October 29, 2025 • John Robb

In the past, weapon systems took decades to build and changed slowly. Autonomy changes this. For example, new capabilities developed by field tests or simulation (testing scenarios in full physics simulators depicting actual environments) could be downloaded to existing weapon systems, making it possible to upgrade a weapon system significantly without any meaningful hardware changes. A process of improvement that used to take many years would shrink to weeks and, in time, days.

Autonomous Weapons
The Great Repricing of Power

October 29, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

Markets heard what they wanted. NVIDIA’s stock surged premarket on news that Trump would discuss the company’s Blackwell AI chip with Xi, pushing it to an unprecedented $5 trillion valuation.

Meanwhile, China quietly bought its first cargoes of U.S. soybeans this season — a symbolic gesture that reminded traders that diplomacy still runs on trade.

“It’s not détente,” wrote  Bloomberg’s Jennifer Welch this morning, “It is a dealmaking with a timer.” Wall Street is ambivalent on peace, but they do like profits.

In the background, China’s biotech sector continues its ethically murky sprint forward — this week, reports surfaced of Chinese scientists creating monkeys engineered to exhibit schizophrenia and autism.

The Great Repricing of Power
About Yesterday’s Rally

October 29, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

A high concentration of capital in a few stocks at the top ranks high among the features we detailed in Anatomy of a Stock Market Bubble.  

On days like yesterday, headlines urge investors to buy. However, they also underscore the fragility of this terrifying bull market: just a handful of names can make the difference between a big up day and a big down day.

About Yesterday’s Rally
American Autonomy

October 28, 2025 • John Robb

America’s role in the world isn’t that of the world’s policeman (a temporary post-World War II role foisted upon the U.S. due to the Cold War) or as the destination of immigrants (for most of the 20th century, when we saw the most significant increases in individual incomes and quality of life, the U.S. didn’t accept many immigrants). Instead, the role the U.S. has played throughout its existence is as the world’s leader in the production, adoption, and socioeconomic integration of new technologies. We figured out how to do it successfully first, and the world followed.

American Autonomy