Steve Hasseler

@mutex7 @MrGlobal2025 K shaped economy is real. Top line (1%) going up and bottom line (rest of us) going down. 🔽🔽

@MrGlobal2025 It is a tale of two economies. One for the rich (and people with substantial stock market returns) and a completely different one for the half of Americans with either no money in the stock market or an immaterial amount. This is the great untold story of Bernanke's scheme.

You don’t have to sell people on a good economy, if it’s good they know it.

We are heading toward another kind of stalemate and more economic chaos, one marked by heavy casualties and the involvement of additional actors. Is the U.S. government going all-in? Not exactly. Strategically this operation will not materialize the way the United States expects, nor will it be capable of reviving Donald Trump’s standing in the midterm election polls. And they know precisely the risks I’m referring to. We can expect a deepening of the economic crisis along with military phases marked by a high risk of environmental disasters and limited strategic advances. Internally, what does this mean? It is highly probable that they will actively work to prevent the elections from taking place as planned, which will shake the United States to its core domestically.

@SydneyLWatson The system they need to figure out/ fix is how to make becoming a Dr not cost $500,000 (outside of military) No one will be a Dr if the pay doesn’t make the spend worth it. So hospitals have to charge to pay. It’s bigger than that. Ins sucks.

Seen a lot of conversation about how predatory the American medical system is. So I will weigh in. I ended up going to the ER about 2 weeks ago for crippling pain. Turned out to be a ruptured ovarian cyst. I was there for MAYBE 4 hours. My bill? $13,500 dollars. Because I'm uninsured (by choice, that shit is a SCAM), the hospital dropped my bill down to $8,100 and some change as an "uninsured" discount. For starters, $13,500 for a 4 hour hospital visit is insane as it is. But the fact the hospital can wipe $5,000 off the bill "just because" should show you how utterly fucked this system is. And to be clear - $8,000 is still an absolutely insane sum of money when all these people did was scan my stomach and give me some pain killers. On my itemized bill, my CT scan was 7k. The iodine they used was $900. Just being in the ER room alone was $2,500. We phoned the hospital to haggle. They dropped the price by $20. Normal people can't survive this shit. I do okay and $8,000 is still an INSANE chunk of money out of my savings. Anyone who argues this isn't a disgusting, predatory system is crazy. And it is even crazier that Americans accept this. And for those of you who argue this is the free market, I need you to be quiet. There can never be a true free market here when government and insurance have their creepy little fingers in this pie. People shouldn't go bankrupt trying to pay medical bills. This has to change.

@YourAnonNews @JDVance I dislike Vance, however, many Englishmen and women when they came to the 13 “colonies” were coming too… a colony of England. Which is where they are from. Could be stated as Settlers. When Americans went west, they were…settlers going to a new place but called America.

This is how stupid this administration is. CBS Presenter: This is a country founded by immigrants Vance: This is a country founded by some immigrants and some settlers. Yo @JDVance who are the settlers? Tell us who the settlers are you fucking chode.

@danielrpopper I like it!

#Chargers are picking up WR Quentin Johnston's fifth-year option.

@MikeNellis @joncoopertweets They never go to work, how can you tell they are missing???

It should really be a bigger story that a Republican member of Congress is missing, and nobody knows where the hell he is.

@StevenIHaglund Is Biadasz going to start at guard and slaughter C?

Aside from my own dislike of the film... the Chargers needed a legitimate starting LG right now and I am not confident they got that player. Slaughter as a backup center option in round 4 would have been fine but this is definitely a head scratcher for me. Pregnon and Dunker were right there man!

@danielrpopper I believe @AndrewBrandt is correct in that rounds 4-7 the talent level is way lower compared to previous years because of NIL $$. Not going in the draft at that level. Trading down and value obtained is not the same as before. Offense doesn’t work if IOL is subpar.

So #Chargers now up to seven picks in this draft. 22 — Akheem Mesidor Still to come 63, 86, 123, 131, 202, 204

@matthewdmarsden @FBI Apparently, with the STOCK act , insider trading is legal. Just disclose late , $200, waive that and trade what you want. No problem..

So, no announcement of Somalians being prosecuted for the fraud in Minnesota. Or members of Congress for insider trading. Or clients of Epstein. Or H1b visa fraudsters. Yet the @FBI is spiking the ball on arresting a soldier for betting on the Maduro raid?

A soldier used classified intel to make $409K on Polymarket. Arrested. 5 federal charges. Assets seized. Congress traded $635 million last year. The STOCK Act has produced zero prosecutions in 14 years. Maximum fine: $200. Routinely waived. The STOCK Act was signed with 14 pens in 2012. Its searchable database was repealed 11 months later by voice vote on a Friday evening. No cameras. No podium. It took 4 pages to remove the only part of the law that worked. This is not new. The pattern is 60 years old. Abu Ghraib: 11 enlisted soldiers convicted. The Secretary of Defense who authorized the techniques was never charged. The lawyer who wrote the torture memo got a federal judgeship. The 2008 financial crisis: 1 banker went to prison. 10 million families lost their homes. The CEO whose bank paid $13 billion in fraud settlements got a 74% raise. Iran-Contra: A Lieutenant Colonel took the fall. The President pardoned the witnesses 11 days before his own trial testimony. The institution prosecutes at the lowest rank, at the lowest cost, so the briefing slides can say enforcement exists. The $409K is not the crime. It is the cost of making $635 million look supervised. I wrote the full investigation. 33 footnotes. 60 years of receipts. gothburz.substack.com/p/five-charges…

I have two stacks on my desk. The left stack is financial disclosure forms from members of Congress. The right stack is waivers for members who filed their financial disclosures late. The right stack is always taller. On Wednesday morning, I watched a soldier get arrested on CNN. I am a Disclosure Analyst for the House Ethics Committee. I have held this position for eleven years. My job is to receive the forms, verify their completeness, and file them. I do not investigate. I do not flag. I do not refer. I file. I have a lanyard. The lanyard says ETHICS. The soldier's name is Gannon Ken Van Dyke. He is thirty-eight years old. He was stationed at Fort Bragg. He was Special Forces. In December, he created an account on a prediction market called Polymarket. On January 2nd, he bet $32,500 that the president of Venezuela would be removed from power. On January 3rd, he helped remove the president of Venezuela from power. He collected $409,881. He has been charged with five federal crimes. Commodities fraud. Wire fraud. Unlawful use of confidential government information. Theft of nonpublic government information. Unlawful monetary transaction. The Department of Justice called it "the first-ever insider trading prosecution on event contracts." I watched this on the television in our break room. Then I walked back to my desk and processed a late financial disclosure from a member of the House Financial Services Committee who purchased $250,000 in bank stocks eleven days before his subcommittee held a closed-door hearing on proposed capital reserve changes. The filing was forty-seven days late. The STOCK Act requires disclosure within forty-five days. The penalty for late filing is $200. I waived it. I waive most of them. In 2021, fifty-four members of Congress and senior staff violated the reporting rules. The fines were minimal. Most were waived. I have a form for the waiver. The form has a box that says "Reason." I write "administrative delay." In ethics, "administrative delay" means the member's office forgot and then remembered when a reporter called. My approval rate is one hundred percent. In any other field, that number would trigger an audit. In mine, it is called thoroughness. Let me show you what I processed this year. January. A senator on the Armed Services Committee sold defense contractor shares worth $1.2 million. Three days later, his committee received a classified briefing that the Iran campaign had exceeded its projected cost by 340%. The stock dropped 8%. He filed the disclosure sixty-one days late. I calculated the fine. $200. His chief of staff asked if it could be waived. He did not ask what the senator traded on. Nobody asks that. The form does not have a field for it. I waived the fine. The senator's portfolio returned 23.4% in 2025. The S&P 500 returned 16.8%. February. A representative on the Energy and Commerce Committee bought pharmaceutical stocks worth $400,000. Two weeks later, her committee advanced a bill that would extend patent exclusivity for the exact drug class she purchased. The stocks rose 14%. She filed on time. There was no fine. There was no investigation. There was nothing to investigate because buying stocks in companies regulated by your own committee is not illegal. It is legal. The STOCK Act made it legal by making it disclosed. In Congress, disclosed means legal. In my office, legal means filed. March. A member whose spouse manages a portfolio worth $9.2 million reported forty-three separate transactions in a single quarter. Twelve of them were in sectors directly affected by legislation the member co-sponsored. The timing on eight of those twelve was within a two-week window of committee action. I logged all forty-three. None were flagged. We do not flag. We file. I asked my supervisor once what would happen if I flagged a filing. She said we do not have a form for that. I never asked again. In 2020, I processed 847 disclosures. In 2023, 1,211. In 2025, 1,614. The number of enforcement actions in each of those years was zero. The numerator changes. The denominator does not. I want to tell you about the soldier again. He made $409,881. He tried to delete his Polymarket account by calling customer service and saying he lost access to his email. He moved his profits into a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then into a new brokerage account. He used his real identity. He placed thirteen bets. Every single one was connected to an operation he personally participated in. In my eleven years, I have processed disclosures from members of Congress who traded on: Pending FDA approvals they learned about in committee. Defense appropriations they voted on. Trade policy they negotiated. Pandemic response measures they drafted. Interest rate decisions they were briefed on before the public. None of them have been charged. None of them have been investigated by the Department of Justice. None of them have been referred to the SEC. The STOCK Act has produced zero prosecutions since it was signed on April 4th, 2012. Fourteen years. Five hundred and thirty-five members. $635 million in trades last year alone. Zero cases. My daughter asked me once what happens when someone breaks the rules. I told her we write it down. She asked what happens after that. I said it depends. She was nine. She is twenty now. It does not depend. Nothing happens after that. The soldier made $409,881 and faces decades in prison. Nancy Pelosi entered Congress in 1987 with a portfolio worth approximately $785,000. It is now worth $133.7 million. That is a return of 16,930%. The Dow Jones returned 2,300% over the same period. Professional fund managers who beat the market for three consecutive years are considered exceptional. She has beaten it for thirty-seven. If a hedge fund produced those returns, the SEC would subpoena the records on a Thursday. She produced them from a building with a chapel and a gift shop. She announced her retirement last year. No investigation was opened. No disclosure was flagged. Her filings were on time. In my office, on time means compliant. Compliant means closed. I want to tell you about the fine. $200. That is the maximum penalty for violating the STOCK Act's disclosure requirements. $200 for a member of Congress whose portfolio gained $4.7 million in a single quarter. I calculated what $200 represents as a percentage of $4.7 million. It is 0.004%. I could not find a comparison that made it meaningful. It is less than the price of the parking pass in the Rayburn garage. It is less than lunch at the members' dining room if you order the crab cakes, which I am told are excellent though I eat at my desk. Since 2012, thirty-one bills have been introduced to restrict congressional trading. I keep a list. The list is longer than the STOCK Act itself. On March 5th, 2026, a representative from Michigan introduced the thirty-second. He called it the "No Getting Rich in Congress Act." The bill would prohibit the President, Vice President, members of Congress, and their spouses from trading individual stocks, cryptocurrency, futures, and commodities while in office. The bill was referred to committee. The committee has not scheduled a hearing. The committee is chaired by a member whose spouse executed $2.1 million in trades last year. The bill will be reviewed. In my office, reviewed means read. Read means acknowledged. Acknowledged means a status has been assigned. A status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one. The soldier used classified information to make $409,881 on a prediction market. He has been charged with five federal crimes. The Department of Justice announced the case on the same day I processed three disclosures from members who traded on committee knowledge worth a combined $3.8 million. The difference between the soldier and the members is not what they did. It is the building they did it in. He did it from Fort Bragg. They did it from the Capitol. He used a prediction market. They used the New York Stock Exchange. He bet on a military operation. They bet on the legislation they write. He did not write the law. They did. They wrote the STOCK Act. Then they funded its enforcement at zero dollars. Then they set its maximum penalty at $200. Then they gave my office the authority to waive it. Then they traded $635 million. The soldier flew to Caracas. He breached a compound. He put his body between a mission and a bullet. The people who ordered the operation were in a building with a credenza and sparkling water. They did not go to Caracas. They went to their brokerage accounts. The soldier made $409,881 and is now in federal custody. The people who knew what he was going to do before he did it made more and filed less. His prosecution is not a failure of the system. It is the system. One conviction per decade, at the lowest level, so the briefing slides can say enforcement exists. The $409,881 is not the crime. It is the cost of making $635 million look supervised. In my field, we call this self-regulation. The soldier's Polymarket account has been frozen. His military career is over. He will spend years in federal prison. My office will process every congressional disclosure filed this year. Every trade logged. Every $200 fine calculated and waived. The system is immaculate. Fourteen years. Zero prosecutions. $635 million a year. A 16,930% return. I have not leaked a document. I have not filed a complaint. I have not deviated from the process one single time. The process was written by the people whose forms I process. As long as the disclosures go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations. My lanyard still says ETHICS. In eleven years, nobody has asked me to define the word.

Cal Ripken went 16 seasons and our 2 highest paid guys can’t go a month without missing games. Oh, and Ahmed Rosario hits a 3 run bomb for Yanks last night. Is it May yet? I still believe. #Mets

Like release his tax returns? Lower grocery prices on day one? Release the Epstein files? Lower prescription prices by 1000%? Release a healthcare plan? No new wars? Lower utility prices? Drain the swamp? Lower the deficit? Create jobs?

@pati_marins64 Me going to Google didactic …

And there are people who say, shocked: “You write in a way that filters the quality of the audience?” Of course I do. People need to feel motivated to read something and then go research it themselves. That’s didactic.

Those who have been following me for a long time know that I don’t usually post sources. Instead, I enrich the text with data that makes verifying the information a matter of just a few seconds. I do this on purpose to filter the quality of the audience. And in cases where the information may not be so explicit, I usually reply with links in the comments.

@GigglingGanon What ever did we do before body cams?

Officer arrests man only to end up in cuffs himself. Officers arrest Moncre Moon during a traffic stop due to an outstanding warrant. He was searched when stopped and was found with 3000 in cash on his person. Moon knew exactly how much money he had and suspected Officer Henry Chapman of taking some of his money to the tune of 900 dollars. ​The bodycam footage later revealed the truth: Chapman had palmed the cash and stuffed it into the driver’s side door pocket of his patrol cruiser. ​ Officer Chapman was arrested by his own department within 6 hours of the incident. ​He resigned from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department the very next day. ​ In September 2024, Chapman entered an Alford Plea to felony embezzlement. While he claimed he didn't have "intent to steal," he acknowledged the evidence was enough to convict him. ​ He was handed 2 years of supervised probation and ordered to complete cognitive behavioral therapy. ​Because Moon spoke up and the supervisor checked the footage, a badge couldn't hide a crime. Right is right, and wrong is wrong. What do you think about this? Another soft sentence for an officer that broke the law? 🤔

@pati_marins64 I really like reading your writing. Keep it up. Are you at 100% that Iran has enriched uranium of some kind?

$20 billion for Iranian uranium I think this is a good starting point for progress, but I believe Iran will put up strong resistance. This would be paid for with frozen Iranian funds. In other words, using money that already belongs to Iran to buy its own uranium for peanuts. The damage to Iran is on the order of $270 billion according to internal assessments, and another $100–200 billion would have been spent on the nuclear program over the decades. I don’t see Iran in a position where it would give up its uranium for just $20 billion. That said, this direction could yield some advances, and I think it’s a good path forward. Iran has announced the reopening of the strait, following the toll model it had already proposed together with Oman. In my view, this is a rather strange system, and it could also be replaced by a pool of compensations paid by the Gulf countries and the US, as suggested in another Iranian proposal. The fact is that the war did not resolve any of its objectives whatsoever and only strengthened Iran’s ties with its extraterritorial militias while also bolstering support for the government.

Great job Sienna! Excellent season!

@pati_marins64 Not liking the substance of a post and it being true can both happen simultaneously. I like your writing. Keep it up .

Writing about conflicts requires honesty. I have readers who stopped reading my posts a while ago because they disagreed with my views on the Ukraine war, and who have now returned to follow me. I also have American readers who are my friends and curse me out about three times a day. Some unfollow me and then come back after a few days. Writing about conflicts means knowing that I will frustrate some people at times, but I have to be honest with everyone and with my own conscience. When the source of information is honest, people can tell that even if they’re not reading exactly what they wanted, they’re looking at something serious that deserves reflection. Every day I read several analysts I disagree with on many points, but they are honest and I’m very interested in their opinions. Disagreeing enriches us, as long as it is also done with honesty and good sense by those receiving the information.

THIS is how you coach a star player during a tough loss in the last moments of their final season.

I am the VP of Workforce Economics at Oracle. We are worth $420 billion. On Tuesday, we sent 30,000 employees a termination email at 6 AM. Not 9. Not business hours. Six in the morning. They woke up to the word "eliminated." The email came from "Oracle Leadership." Not a manager. Not a name. Oracle Leadership. It said: "We are grateful for your dedication, hard work, and the impact you have made." By the time they read the word "grateful," their access to email, files, and Slack had already been revoked. The gratitude was the last Oracle communication they received. We did not eliminate the roles. We eliminated the salaries. In the same fiscal year, we filed 3,126 H-1B petitions to hire foreign workers. 436 this year alone. The roles are identical. The pay is not. An H-1B software engineer earns $87,000. The domestic median for the same work is $106,000. Eighty-three percent of H-1B workers are classified at entry-level wages for senior positions. The industry calls this a skills gap. It is a pay cut that requires a passport. The visa is tied to the employer. If the worker leaves, they lose their legal right to remain in the country. If they negotiate, they risk the same. If they organize, the sponsor declines to renew. That is retention. Our revenue this quarter is $17.2 billion. Up 22%. Net income up 95%. We have $553 billion in committed future contracts. Up 325%. These are not the numbers of a company that needs to lay anyone off. We took a $2.1 billion restructuring charge. That is the cost of the gratitude. It frees up $8 to $10 billion in annual cash flow. That cash services $156 billion in AI data centers we are building. Starting 2028, OpenAI pays us $82 million per day. Larry Ellison is worth $189 billion. He pledged $51 billion in Oracle shares as collateral for the Stargate AI venture. Announced at the White House. The stock rose 4% on Tuesday. The day of the 6 AM emails. Wall Street did not see 30,000 people. They saw the margin. Amazon laid off 30,000 since October. Filed thousands of H-1B petitions in the same window. This is not one company. This is the operating model. Fire the salary. Keep the role. Fill it with someone whose legal right to remain in the country depends on your continued sponsorship. Pay them less. They will not complain. They cannot. One employee's father worked at Oracle for 20 years. No phone call. No meeting. An email at 6 AM and a locked laptop. The role is still open. The people we fired are free. The people we hired are not.