Dougie Kass

Cant begrudge Bezos for selling $4 billion shares...but what a buzzkill

My Daddy always said “Never trust a man who cheats at golf”… Here’s the President CHEATING during the club Championship he claims he won.

President Trump cheating in golf... @tomkeene @andrewrsorkin @TheJudgeCNBC @carlquintanilla @peterboockvar @convertbond

Donald Trump here in broad daylight showing how he wins things watch the caddie “cheat helper” with the blue sleeves.

The absence of skepticism on Fin TV today is mind boggling to me. The herd (and consensus) grows ever larger and Bull Market in Glibness is alive and well. Concerns about rising interest rates, persistent inflation, growing deficit/debt, the ascent of socialism and improvisational policy in Washington DC are totally ignored. @TheJudgeCNBC @carlquintanilla @tomkeene @business @cnbcfastmoney @cnbchalftime @annmarie @peterboockvar @convertbond @guyadami @squawkbox @andrewrsorkin @beckyquick @saraeisen @gnoble @KeithMcCullough @sama @RPKent @HedgeyeDJ

Nothing to see here, folks, move along...

Just so non-golfers know... No 80-year-old on earth with a pancake swing and the chip yips has ever shot TEN SHOTS under his age. Club members let him win because nobody wants to get audited the rest of their lives. #CommanderInCheat

"More Tales From Nvidia: Like Jumbo Shrimp the Situation Awareness Hedge Fund Was an Oxymoron (Issue #229)" Now on the blog tab of seabreezepartnerslp.com

@thestreetpro.com More Tales From Nvidia - Like Jumbo Shrimp The Situation Awareness Hedge Fund Was An Oxymoron  (Issue #226!) *  I continue to call B.S. to the anticipated projections for productivity enhancement, the largely positive expectations for marginal aggregate economic growth/activity from AI and to the unrealistic forecasts for return on invested capital of the AI capital spending spree... * If the dreams of AI (job) cost saves are realized, how is the US economy to function? “When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.” - Warren Buffett (1993 Lecture to Columbia Business Graduate School Students) With regard to The Lack of Situational Awareness Hedge Fund, one point that has not been made yet is the moronic investors there.  If you put all your money on one number at the roulette table, if it hits, you take your winnings and run away from the casino as fast as you can.  It sounds like almost none of the imbeciles in the fund did that.  You would think the fund's performance would have set off some alarm bells for anyone with a brain about the amount of risk that was being taken.  But I guess it didn’t.  Why?  Because apparently, a lot of the capital in the fund came from Silicon Valley VC types who were all drinking the same kool-aid, and also have zero concept of risk.  Better lucky than good I guess.  A lot of dummies have made a lot of money in recent times.  This is what a lack of price discovery and too much money in the economy can do.  But as they say, he who is closest to the monetary spigot drinks the most, until they don’t, I guess. One analysis that would be interesting to do would be if all the revenue forecasts came true for the model providers (Open AI, Anthropic, Gemini, Grok AI, whatever Meta calls its thing, all the Chinese and open source, etc.), how many implied jobs saved would that be?  For example, I saw one forecast from a prominent pundit that had Anthropic at 2 trillion of revenue in 2030, and still growing rapidly.  My guess is these are the types of numbers investors are being shown. At any rate, their revenue is the customer’s expense.  If the idea of AI is to replace jobs, at $100k per job, $2 trillion of revenue is 20 million jobs replaced.  That is Anthropic alone.  I suspect the revenue forecasts for Open AI are the same.  Another 20 million jobs down the tube by 2030 alone.  Remember both are meant to still grow exponentially from that point.  The forecasts for those two alone imply 40 million jobs gone by 2030 and then continuing to eat jobs at an exponential rate. To put that in perspective, there are 160 million employed Americans.  But only 20% make $100k or more.  Let’s call those white collar jobs – those are the type of jobs AI is supposed to replicate.  20% of 160 million is only 32 million jobs.  So somehow only 2 of the AI companies displace 40 million jobs when there are only 32 million people in those jobs to begin with.  If you wanted to argue lower end jobs, like the 50K type, well that would be 80 million jobs.  51K is median income in the US, and that would be half the labor force down the tubes.  This is only Open AI and Anthropic, I have left out the revenue forecasts for all of the other players that are also heavily investing and meant to be doing the same things. If this were to ever happen, how exactly is the US economy supposed to function? I certainly do not want to hear any retorts about Jevons Paradox and how these are productivity enhancement tools.  These things are not Microsoft Excel.  Excel costs about $10-$20 a year.  It does not take trillions in CAPEX to run.  It takes a PC.  That is a productivity enhancement tool.  The AI companies, given the underlying cost base, are all about replacing labor.  That is the only way the massive amount of investment could pay for itself. Said another way, for their customers to pay them this amount in revenue, they will have to realize more than that amount in cost savings, otherwise there is no point, it just becomes increased expense.  AI cannot do anything that humans can’t already do.  It is just a trade.  The tech does it, or the human does it.  That assumes the AI can even do it to begin with, which in many cases, it cannot. Of course, I do not believe any of this, because I do not think (as expressed in some of the 225+ More Tales series I have written) Gen AI works well enough to replace large swaths of white collar labor, and it never will.  Which is why the investment dollars into it will never be re-captured.  Further, I believe the revenue (and profitability) forecasts being put out there for all the model providers are total poppycock and imply things that are just not possible for a variety of reasons.  I gave one example, there are probably many more. WSJ:  “The push to expand head count, at least modestly, is a reversal from the prevailing corporate messaging during much of the AI era. Major employers largely held back on adding people due to economic uncertainties or a belief that artificial intelligence could shoulder more tasks on the job. But some executives say the costs and limitations of AI now demand that more people be added; others want to hire people back following layoffs.” Bottom Line I continue to call B.S. to the anticipated projections for AI productivity enhancement, the largely positive expectations for marginal aggregate economic growth/activity from AI and to the unrealistic forecasts for return on invested capital of the AI capital spending spree. @tomkeene @ferrotv @lisaabramowicz1 @annmarie @business @KeithMcCullough @sama @RPKent @HedgeyeDJ @gnoble79 @SquawkCNBC @andrewrsorkin @beckyquick @saraeisen @joesquawk @SullyCNBC @guyadami @TheJudgeCNBC @carlquintanilla @WhitneyTilson @peterboockvar @convertbond @cnbchalftime @CNBCFastMoney @QTRResearch @edzitron @timseymour @cnbc @EconguyRosie

Bessent gave Trump the "village idiot" explanation of currency interventions.

At 9:23 this morning, the White House abruptly dismissed the press traveling with the president of the United States while he was away for the weekend at his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. With the cameras now gone, just three hours later at 12:32 p.m., Donald Trump would share the first of 42 posts on Truth Social in a span of less than 3 hours and 15 minutes. The president’s public meltdown began when he posted his disappointment with one of his appointees, “I don’t know what she was thinking?” before he jumped straight into more delusional and dangerous images. Among the flood of posts, he shared an AI-generated image of himself kissing Jesus on a golden crucifix. He shared a “TRUMP 2028” campaign poster, a fake image of himself walking beside a handcuffed alien on a military base, and a renewed threat to invade Greenland. He didn’t stop there. He posted a painting of himself as the commanding general, leading Revolutionary War soldiers into battle with his mouth open in a battle cry, while flames consumed the battlefield behind him, and a battered American flag flew overhead. This is how he sees himself. Not as a president spending the weekend at his golf course, but as a warrior king leading his nation into battle, one he would have never had the courage to actually fight in. That fantasy is not harmless, because right now he is leading us deeper into a real war where real people have died. He also shared a fake image of his face merged with President George Washington’s, split straight down the middle, under the words “250 Years / In God We Trust.” It was a deliberate attempt to place himself alongside the founder of the American republic. Because he sees himself as his equal and inseparable from the nation itself. He’s saying he is Washington and he is the republic. He posted a map of South America with Venezuela filled in as an American flag and labeled “51st State.” He shared an actual photograph of himself stepping out of a golf cart, hunched forward, a white USA hat in his hand, looking every single day of his eighty years, but with the caption “President Trump ages in reverse!” Then there was the created image of himself as Elvis Presley in his iconic white rhinestone jumpsuit, with a deep V-neck and with his chest exposed, and a bald eagle embroidered across his heart. In it, Trump, masquerading as Elvis, stands in front of a microphone as though he is about to perform for a waiting crowd. And I couldn’t help but think about the irony of Trump choosing Elvis in this moment, knowing that he spent his final years overmedicated and isolated, surrounded by enablers who told him what he wanted to hear while his body and mind deteriorated. And how Elvis died alone in a bathroom at Graceland while the people closest to him pretended everything was fine. If Trump was trying to choose a metaphor for where he is right now, he could not have picked a more accurate one. He just kept going. He posted an image of himself as a young man in a military school uniform, seated across a table from present-day Trump, with the caption “Same Guy. Even more energy now!” Present-day Trump is staring adorably at younger Trump. But what the image actually shows is the distance between who he was and who he has become. The young man in the uniform is upright, sharp, but not too far away from bone spurs and draft deferments. The man sitting across from him is eighty years old, and struggling. The fact that he felt compelled to post this, to insist publicly that nothing has changed, tells us everything about what he is afraid of. People who are fine do not need to prove they are fine. People who are declining do.

And I shot a 70 on Saturday at Shinnecock Hills with only a gap wedge. @tomkeene @lisaabramowicz1 @ferrotv @annmarie @business @squawkbox @joesquawk @beckyquick @andrewrsorkin @saraeisen @guyadami @SullyCNBC @carlquintanilla @TheJudgeCNBC @KeithMcCullough @SamofAmerica @RPKent @HedgeyeDJ @gnoble79 @peterboockvar @convertbond @cnbcfastmoney @cnbchalftime @MelissaLeeCNBC

Do you think OpenAI and Anthropic will be able to live up to these RPO obligations?

A recent paper by Pranjal Drall and Andrew Granato, "Private Credit's State Backstop," describes how private equity firms have bought up life insurers and stuffed their balance sheets with opaque private credit. When one of these insurers fails, it does not go through bankruptcy. Other insurers are assessed to cover the shortfall, and in most states they recover the cost through tax credits. Roughly 86% of the bill quietly lands on taxpayers. No vote, no headline. AI data center debt is exactly the kind of asset this machine is built to absorb. The consequences of the AI bubble will likely spill into the financial system, and the pipes are already laid.

Many say it was the greatest game ever played. People were crying. Some have fainted. I nominate Trump for the FIFA Greatest Player on Your Own Golf Course Prize. The White House has released a video of the game. Anyone who doesn't watch it will be pepper sprayed and deported.

How did this happen to our country?

Trump spent the 1990s/2000s laundering Russian mob money through his real estate sales when no bank would touch him.