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Beneath the Surface

The Hoover Boom

Loading ...Bill Bonner

November 12, 2024 • 3 minute, 42 second read


electionmarket rally

The Hoover Boom

As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.

H.L. Mencken

A week has passed since Donald J. Trump was re-elected president.  The stock market has celebrated with the most impressive run-up since Herbert Hoover was elected.   Hoover was a take-charge kind of guy too.  “For six years, that man has been giving me unsolicited advice,” remarked out-going president Calvin Coolidge, “all of it bad.”

But Hoover was elected in 1928.  Thereafter, stocks rose a spectacular 40%, before crashing in 1929.

Since the election results were announced last week, one third of the country has been overjoyed, whooping and hollering, sure that happy days are here again. Another third acts as if it were looking at the Reichstag Fire. And the final third gets out the hotdogs and marshmallows.

The poor Democrats have gnashed so many teeth, it is amazing they have any left. This time, they lost by such a big margin the familiar excuses — Russian interference, misinformation, bad luck — just don’t seem to be enough. This time, the Trump victory tells us “who we really are,” says a recent New York Times headline.

Yes, we are a nation of dumbbells and dreamers… neither always good, nor always bad… but always subject to influence.  And when ‘the plain folks’ speak, they don’t necessarily say what the elites want to hear.

But here at BPR, we emphasize the positive. It is a shame Americans elected Donald Trump. But it’s a good thing they didn’t elect Kamala Harris. And some other good things have come out of the experience.

For one, the benevolent expertise of the elites as channeled by their propaganda media has been thoroughly discredited. The Wall Street Journal:

Trump’s Win Cemented It: New Media Is Leaving the Old Guard Behind

The old media — TV, newspapers, magazines — were overwhelmingly behind Ms. Harris. She had the support of the whole Elite Establishment — the press, the universities, Hollywood and the DC establishment. One study showed that 80% of the news coverage on Trump was negative. And yet, the public seemed to pay no attention.

The legacy media also clung to themes that favored Harris over Trump. One was the idea that ‘our democracy is in danger.’ Donald Trump was supposed to be a ‘fascist’ and should he win, or so went the line of argument, it might be the last election in America.

They held steadfast to the idea of the January 6th ‘insurrection,’ too, when any fool could see that the middle-aged dopes milling around the Capitol building were no threat to the police power of the empire.

They insisted that the Covid was an ‘existential threat,’ and not just another flu. Again, the evidence told a different story.

And they even wanted to change the English language to accommodate their woke-ish fads; the ‘him’ or the ‘her’ was replaced by the fake gender-neutral plural, ‘them.’

And while they were adamant about not offending someone’s tender sensibilities by using the wrong pronoun, they were nevertheless eager to send US-made bombs overseas… so the killing of the hes, shes, and thems could continue apace.

These absurdities attached themselves to Ms. Harris like ticks to a dog. She represented the Powers-That-Be….the ‘system’ that had saddled the nation with $36 trillion in debt, and made America’s rich richer than ever…but not given the working class a real raise in half a century.  It was this ‘system’ that ‘the plain folks’ despised.  And what could Ms. Harris say, but ‘vote for me; I’ll give you more of it.’

So, it turned out that the real threat to democracy was not the MAGA crowd. It was democracy itself. The ancient Greeks warned us about it. Allowing the masses to choose a leader is always a threat to the health of the nation.  And in the election of 2024, it gave us the choice between cholera and the plague, Trump or Harris.

Voters washed their hands and tried their best to avoid getting sick. But most felt a patriotic duty to run a fever… for one or the other. And since they couldn’t stomach any more-of-the-same from Kamala, they crossed themselves and pulled the lever for Trump.


Networked Nationalism Rises

October 27, 2025 • John Robb

On the current trajectory, online and offline tribal warfare, with events that range from assassinations to riots to sabotage, is inevitable. Worse still, with both sides waging moral warfare (good versus evil), there is no middle ground, rendering compromise impossible.

To avoid this, the government could step in to crack down on illegal immigrants, serial criminality, and activist blue cells to slow the ramp in extrajudicial violence from the red tribe. This would reduce the chance we see a rapid escalation in tit for tat violence. However, to do this, it would need to designate many activist groups as terrorist entities and pursue them with the degree of vigor we saw with Islamic radicals after 9/11.

Networked Nationalism Rises
Economic Cockroaches

October 27, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

We’ve been watching private credit all year — the $3 trillion shadow banking machine that promises “nimble lending” but operates in the dark. Think of it as the modern heir to subprime mortgages: a system that works beautifully until it doesn’t.

According to Moody’s, U.S. commercial banks now hold $300 billion in loans to private credit firms, up from just $100 billion a decade ago. That’s more than 10% of total bank lending — and it means the “non-bank” lenders aren’t so non-bank after all.

When banks lend to private funds, which then lend to companies like First Brands, the risk just loops back into the same system regulators thought they’d insulated after 2008.

Economic Cockroaches
Hedge Funds Are All-In on Chip Stocks

October 27, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

Hedge funds have gone all-in on semiconductor stocks.

Hedge Funds Are All-In on Chip Stocks
Santiago Capital: Empire By Code

October 24, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

We believe the emergence of a USD stablecoin carries the potential to be a transformative event in monetary history, one as consequential as the day the United States severed its link to gold and as powerful in shaping the world’s financial order as the moment it abandoned Bretton Woods.

This paper does not offer reassurance of the status quo. It confronts a reality that few seem to have yet recognized and even fewer truly understand. It describes the quiet emergence of a tool whose strategic potential remains largely unseen, even as it begins to reshape the foundations of global finance.

Santiago Capital: Empire By Code