This week in our Members Only Newsletter you missed:
Max Notes on Marc Lamont Hill and Van Lathan discussing Candace Owens.
The Tuesday Top Five news articles everyone should be reading
An original essay from News Beatâs Rashed Mian on refugees in the U.S.
And âNot for Nothingâ on assassination attempts, The Bear and Laura Loomer
So I guess the question isâŚwhat are you waiting for? Sign up today to become a member and level up to unlock a slew of additional perks!
Max Notes
There are so many mixed signals for voters to interpret. Exhibit A, see our Chart of the Week that tracks two very similar trend lines that mean very different things for the average worker. The first is the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The second is the rate of change in rental housing prices. Up, up and away on both. I would encourage everyone to sign up for Matt Stollerâs BIG Substack because the rental data is inspired by his most recent piece. Check it out.
In terms of the market, investors responded predictably to the rate cut by boosting equities. The Fed blamed rising unemployment on the surge of migrants. The White House has quietly admitted that immigration likely helped suppress inflation. Rates going down should help consumers in the long-run, but it means in the short-run the Fed is bearish on the economy. What are we to make of all this information and what are the political ramifications of it all?
Weâll find out in a few weeks.
Everything intensifies in the weeks leading up to an election and if weâre to believe the polling data, this race is still neck-and-neck. The news stories that break late in the game will have outsized influence on mindset at the polls. What matters most, however, is how voters feel about their personal economic security at that moment.
In terms of the news, Israel seems determined to pull us into their bullshit as they set off detonations throughout Lebanon and, as of this morning, even bombed Beirut. (See below for the Uncommitted Voters announcement.) And I think we can say with confidence that a Trump presidency is preferable to the Likud Party even though Trump said this week that if he loses, âthe Jewish people would have a lot to doâ with it.
As far as economic security, pick your poison. Markets are up. Employment is down. Everyone is in debt over their heads. But rates are coming down. Immigrants are taking our jobs. Weâve closed the border so that should all work out. Gas prices are going down so thatâs helpful, unless thatâs correlated with demand, in which case thatâs a bad sign. The pundits will stretch any narrative they can but when it comes down to the moment of truth, voters will give the answer to the question both candidates avoided at the debate: are you better off today than you were four years ago?
Other things Iâm obsessing overâŚ
Iâm not above following petty gossip so Iâll admit that Iâm fascinated by this Blake Lively drama.
I canât with this. When theyâre backstage do they admit to one another what theyâre doing?
-Max
Chart of the Week
Repeat after me: âThe stock market is not the economy. The stock market is not the economy. The stock market is not the economy. The stock market is not the economy. The stock market is not the economy.â
On the top you have the historic gains of the stock market over time. On the bottom you have the historic increase in rent over time. One of these impacts you dramatically each and every day. The other might impact your retirement if youâre one of the fortunate ones with a 401(k) or IRA.
Headlines
Rent Is Increasing Due to More Than Just Demand and Inventory
He did it again. First he modeled the impact of corporate price gouging on consumer inflation and changed the narrative around inflation in the United States. Now Matt Stoller has dug into a federal lawsuit to uncover the potential extent of price-fixing on rent increases in several highly populated urban centers throughout the country. Stoller is killing it and Iâm here for all of it with season tickets and his rookie card.
From the article:
âRealPage allegedly encouraged excess rental prices in a number of ways. First, it collected sensitive information about the market and let its clients know what everyone else was charging. Second, it explicitly encouraged rent hikes through default settings in its software, and by having its RealPage âpricing advisorsâ harass employees of clients until they raised rents. As one unnamed landlord put it, âI always liked this product because your algorithm uses proprietary data from other subscribers to suggest rents and term. Thatâs classic price fixing.â And finally, it hosted in-person meetings where its clients would talk with one another about raising prices.â
The Uncommitted Voters movement issued a statement of no confidence in Vice President Harrisâ bid for the presidency. Their statementâthe organization wonât support Harris but urges its members to vote against Donald Trump and steer clear of third partiesâunderscores both the intractability of the White House position on Gaza and the cold political reality of straddling the middle no matter how many are slaughtered.
From the article:
ââAt this time, our movement 1) cannot endorse Vice President Harris; 2) opposes a Donald Trump presidency, whose agenda includes plans to accelerate the killing in Gaza while intensifying the suppression of anti-war organizing; and 3) is not recommending a third-party vote in the Presidential election, especially as third party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency given our countryâs broken electoral college system,â the statement continued.â
Honestly, the article headline says it all so you donât even have to click through to the article. The fact that western media canât bring itself to call what Israel is doing in Lebanon âterrorismâ is so blatantly partisan and misguided itâs laughable.
From the article:
âMuch of the mainstream Western media has marveled at the so-called âprecisionâ and âsophisticationâ of the attack, framing it as an operation intended only to target members of Hezbollah. This is patently false, as numerous civilians have been injured and killed.â
Good things come to those who wait, because good things come from those who are late. I was late getting every piece of this weekâs episode to the mighty Manny Faces so our long-promised Libya episode will likely drop early in the week instead of this weekend. Itâs a beast of an episode but one that I know Unf*ckers will thoroughly enjoy. As 99 said when we wrapped in the studio, âthis felt good. An old school Unf*cking.â Itâs a story Iâve been wanting to tell for years and one that I first learned about in college: The Great Man-Made River project in Libya.
At the time I learned of it, Libya was still out of favor with the western powers but Gaddafi was still very much alive and in power. (The idea of Libya without Gaddafi was unimaginable back then). Determined to emerge from the Reagan era sanctions regime and gain economic independence, Gaddafi unveiled one of the most ambitious engineering marvels ever conceived. The idea to pump water from beneath the desert sands first came about in the â60s but the capability to engineer such a feat simply did not exist. In the 1980s, Gaddafi revived the idea and by the â90s, the world finally witnessed this miracle.
Hereâs a snippet from the pod:
Max: âThe discovery of vast oil reserves in Libya in 1959 changed everything. Suddenly Libya was on everyoneâs radar. As we mentioned in the introduction, not only was access to the Mediterranean a crucial advantage, the quality of Libyaâs crude was exceptionally pure and therefore easy to refine. Major oil and gas interests from the west began to set roots in an ally nation that happened to be in desperate need of capital. And the British were all too happy to wean the new kingdom off its foreign welfare support.â
Resources
Pod Love
âA conversation with two historians, Sergio GonzĂĄlez and Lloyd Barba, who just finished a fantastic series called Sanctuary: On the Border Between Church and State. I had the opportunity to act as the executive producer for the series and will be out soon for Axis Mundi Media, in conjunction with the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement. The story they tell is of a radical civil rights movement that confronted restrictive governmental policies on immigration from the 1980s all the way to the current moment.â
Iâve talked about this book a few times but felt it deserved another mention in the newsletter considering the number of new subscribers. I canât tell you how many times Iâve referred to this book to refresh my understanding of how the modern world came to be. So many nations, and therefore so many issues we face still today, were established in the wake of the first Great War. Without this context, which MacMillan expertly lays out in detail, Iâd be lost.
Blending comedy and journalism, Katie Halper has made a name for herself in the progressive online media ecosystemâoffering unflinching critiques of corporate news outlets and the political establishment.
âEleventh Hour Rescue is a fully registered 501C(3) nonprofit, volunteer based organization dedicated to saving the lives of innocent dogs and cats on death row. Many of them are rescued at their Eleventh Hour--when they are scheduled to be put to death by other shelters that can no longer care for them. We give our dogs and cats all the medical attention they require, a place to live, and through our extensive adoption services, a second chance at a happy and fulfilled life. Eleventh Hour Rescue is not subsidized by government grants and receives no major corporate funding. We rely solely on the generosity of our volunteers, the community and animal lovers everywhere.â
