Trump Signs Big PEUtiful Bill

Trump II signed the Big PEUtiful Bill into law at a White House ceremony.  It was part of a big July 4th celebration.

Who needs a founding father or even a Holy Father, when you can have Daddy?

Trump usurps everything.  He surrounds it, embraces it, suffocates it and draws it into his ownership sphere, all for the sake of his glory and profit.  Much like a private equity underwriter (PEU).

The Big PEUtiful Bill leverages debt like private equity, a new $5 trillion.  Once again, the rich get richer:

millionaire earners will see an average after-tax income increase of $75,000 in 2026

So lets give a cheer for Trump's American Spirit - OLD, LOUD & GREEDY!

Land of Make Believe

Once upon a time financial barbarians schemed to take over the political system, endearing themselves to both the Red and Blue political parties through donations (direct and indirect via affiliates), lobbying and political action committees, as well as the lure of post public service employment as a private equity underwriter (PEU).  Legendary PEU founders became "policy making billionaires" and elected officials did their bidding in exchange for boat or balloon rides.

PEUs could be on all sides of a deal, debt and equity, while multiple affiliates could earn fees for their role in making the deal happen, as could the parent PEU.  Elected officials said this was good as there were "many arms of various lengths."

A wise man in the story observed private equity and characterized it as:

Everything is ours.  We do not lose.  We do not pay taxes. We create the prices.  We make and change the contracts.  We do not use our money.  We make the laws.

This broad widespread power is strange because many PEU firms have a history as bad actors.  The wise man asked:

Who knew free markets meant free passes to corrupt insiders?  Have you ever seen a system where the perpetrators of previous financial carnage and malfeasance are allowed to glide through to their next scheme with the regulatory runways foamed so they can light the fuse of a greater financial systemic bomb? 

The era of make believe did not descend on us in a day.  It's been in the making since PEUs were founded and grew in political power/influence.  The wise man paid attention.   

We have witnessed so much corrosive behavior, we think it's normal.  Once you accept a little corruption, like diehard Clinton fans, Obama fans, and George W. Bush fans, you let the Devil in the door. 

The next step is how many meals the Devil shows up for? Trump hosts a 24 hour "all Beelzebub can eat" carving station, set up buffet style. It's all the same, the only difference being what's in the DOGE bag. 

There is no pushback because everyone is in on the take. Private equity has shown us the way. Private equity puts up numbers you cannot see and verify, and Trump engages in the same with all "the deals" he announces and claims victory without details.

The Devil would be in the details but they are never shown by the PEU boys or their political supplicants.  Surprise provisions enter legislation and "no one knows" where they came from.  Thus, we are living in the Land of Make Believe.  

Politicians Red and Blue love PEU and their new TechGod brethren.   Increasingly more elected officials are PEUs, some in the past, while others have that as their future.

The Land of Make Believe has a PEUture.  For the rest of us, it remains to be seen, but early signs are "you are on your own" and there are no financial cops on the beat.

Insufferable TechGods Go Banking

Billionaire TechGods hope to open a digital only bank in Columbus, Ohio.  The group includes TechGod of War Palmer Luckey, TechGod of Spying Joe Lonsdale and Superior TechGod Peter Thiel.  

Erebor, the people-less digital bank, will fill the void left by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.  Really?  Regulators are going to approve a new bank for the person who took down the old?

If it had been Apple Valley bank with regular folk the normal FDIC max of $250,000 would have held.

Erebor will be a crypto focused bank and hold stablecoins, also known as "the pretty."  Thiel already has a Bitcoin Treasury gig with Anthony Pompliano's ProCap Financial.  

Erebor's name has interesting roots.

Straight from the Underworld of Dark TechGods, the live forever, tax hating variety.  These are the people benefiting from Trump II's Big Beautiful Shirk & Jerk.  They freely take from the Treasury, but hate to give.

Erebor is a churn play by Palmer Luckey who plans to employ 4,000 workers by 2035.  Those people need a bank.  Why not a captive one?

Trump's Big Beautiful Shirk & Jerk

To celebrate the passage of Trump's big beautiful shirk and jerk benefiting the billionaire class, the Trump Organization is releasing a truly one of a kind music masterpiece.  "There really has never been anything like this.  Not in the history of the world."

Donald Trump sings the Hits of the 80's New Wave era.  

Trump noted making the record brought back memories of the 80's palling around with Jeffery Epstein and his cadre of child sex victims.  

In his sales pitch Donald noted people can download the album on their new Trump Mobile T1 phone, possibly made in America or a country that rhymes with it, or a country that does not rhyme, in which case it would be Bust dat Rhyme.  The T1 comes with a White House number pre-loaded.  It's listed under "Daddy."

Trump expects big sales of both the phone and album on Amazon.  Please buy both items ASAP as Jeff Bezos has a monstrous wedding bill to pay.  

Trump noted that he did not touch Medicaid.  Congress did with a little help from the special executive department DOUGEBAG (Department of Ungodly Greedy Executives Biased Against Government). 

Just like he did with government operations, Trump is turning Medicaid over to the TechGods.  Good luck navigating the proof of work portal, guaranteed to give one cardiac arrest or, if kicked off enough times, a major stroke.  

Which leads us back to the Big Beautiful Shirk & Jerk, benefitting billionaire private equity underwriters (PEU) and their new TechGod brethren.

TechGods are coming after your language and cognitive skills.  Just in case they're already having an impact, the Trump sings the 80's is a joke, DOUGEBAG is a takeoff on DOGE, but pretty much the rest is accurate.

Update 7-3-25:  The House passed the BBS&J, so Trump II can now celebrate by singing "I'll Melt the World to Stomp on You."  The bill accelerates Social Security and Medicare insolvency to 2032.

Insider Money Funnel on Hyperdrive

DOUGEBAG could not find hundreds of thousands in wasteful spending, specifically $600,000 for golf carts and $80,000 for portable toilets (as it would not be right for nonmember Secret Service agents to use club facilities.)

The insider money funnel continues pumping huge sums to government officials with full time jobs like Governor Kristi Noem who got $80,000 for fundraising.  Noem did not declare this money when she became Homeland Security Chief.

Former Congressman Matt Gaetz has been offered a home run payment of $2 million for a major deliverable, one requiring Gaetz use all his connections to Trump II, the digital Caligula.

So while the Red Team was circulating serious green a citizen in Miami was rounded up by police and thrown out of a meeting.  Their offense?  The expectation that a question would be answered.

That citizen failed to show up with green fuel for the insider money funnel.  No acknowledgement of you...no answers as you are not really there.

New Party Time in the Schism

The dynamic duo of Pablum and Doink has deteriorated to the point that one must go.  The two billionaires paired orbits to get Pablum elected and Doink the opportunity to impart his mark on government via DOUGEBAG (Department of Ungodly Greedy Executives Biased Against Government).

DOUGEBAG employed the private equity underwriter (PEU) playbook.  That includes substituting people for crappy, incapable and unreliable technology.

Their two massive egos eventually repelled one another.  Pablum created his own new universe which takes common words in use for centuries and brands them as new on his social media site.  I expect he'll eventually put them all in a book and sell it, Creations by Pablum:  Usurped from Webster.

Doink returned to his six five companies and his six five part-time CEO jobs.  A former business partner said this of the fractured relationship between Trump and Musk:

“Knowing Elon the way I know him, I do think he’s going to do everything to damage the president.”

That appears to be underway.  Pablum is known for punching back harder, so this could quickly get out of hand.  How long before the two go supernova?  Beware the blast radius.

Update 7-2-25:  Jesse wrote:

I have trouble finding reliable sources of information these days. 

 And when it comes to making careless, clickbait statements of speculation, excess is considered the rule. 

 This is the age of puffery. And the cheeto-bandito is the puffiest.

And I thought Pablum nailed Trump II, the digital Caligula.  Add Puff Daddy Cheeto-Bandito to the list.

Nothing Wrong: PEU Edition

 NomDePlumber wrote on X:

"Nothing wrong with a Private Equity fund manager which owns an insurer, which sells annuities, which are backed with Private Credit loans, which finance the Private Equity fund manager portfolio companies, and which require capital protection against default losses, which consists of loss-absorption guarantees by offshore reinsurers, which the Private Equity fund manager also owns.

That sums up the current state of my lingering concern about private equity underwriters (PEU) being on all sides of a deal, charging fees for their multiple roles and setting up recurring payments via management fees, as well as special dividends/distributions.  

NomDePlumber's observation highlights the credit/equity side of PEU family churn, but it also occurs in operations as affiliates buy goods and services from one another.  I imagine AI is turbocharging PEU internal cross selling.  

AI is another opportunity for sponsor fee generation.  There's the fee for "parent AI services" and AI could be used to identify yet to be thought of new PEU fees for yet to be conceived products.

And the U.S. Treasury is supposed to backstop all of this when profit accelerating leverage reverses and becomes a capital destruction buzz saw?  Yes, Virginia that is the way Congress works.  Politicians Red and Blue love PEU (and their new TechGod brethren).  

AI Regulation: No Prophylaxis in Sight

The majority of people do not want AI and I am one.  

I am all for advancing knowledge, that from the creation of theory and the real world testing of that theory.  That is not AI, essentially a giant cauldron of inference using parameters.  

This interview opened my eyes to issues around AI development, that there literally is no code to examine and that the people wanting carte blanche to develop AI have a primary profit motive and are of the same ilk that gave us individual/society destroying "social media."

Why is it in the federal government's interest to usurp states rights on AI?

Because TechGods and PEU Legends want it.  Their profits are prioritized over our safety and general welfare.  

China "cannot" legally steal your intellectual property, but AI can "strip-mine the human expression and ingenuity" in copyrighted works.  

Trump II's revulsion for regulation comes at a very bad time.  AI needs more than guardrails.  It needs a few red lines.

If you want to learn more about the development path for AI view this video.

Update 6-30-25:  Fifteen risks of AI

Stephen Miller's Palantir Bayou

The Washington D.C. Swamp has morphed into a Louisiana Bayou where the spoils go to the "ethical in characterization only" Trump RICO operation.

Take Master Creep Stephen Miller who's child saw the incredible investment opportunity known as Palantir, an unobtrustive, instrusive spying company that cut its teeth protecting global tamperers (The Bliderberg Group).

I'm glad Miller's kid could see the future and know his dad wanted to build a dossier on all Americans.  "100 percent situational awareness!"  What a lesson for a young child.  

The question is how did the child get between "$1-$250,000" to invest in Palantir?  Unless it was a gift from Uncle TechGod Alex Karp.  That would raise a host of other issues.

Historically, the point has been to rid oneself of financial conflicts so "leaders" could focus on serving the people.  That eroded once both political teams focused on giving preferred insiders "base wealth" form the private sector that gave them financial security to enter government and enact change benefiting their major donors.

Politicians Red and Blue love PEU (private equity underwriters - policy making billionaires) and their TechGod brethren, so much so, they hold their stock.  Democracy has a leech impediment that repeats itself on multiple levels.  Suck information, produce profits, order more information sucking, stock price goes up, government officials net worth goes up....

Leeches were common medicine at the founding of our country.  It's fitting they are back strong in Washington D.C., now Bayou Zizi.

The PEUtification of Iran

The Carlyle Group's Admiral James Stavridis and 8VC's Joe Lonsdale want to invest in Iran.  TechGod Joe told CNBC said he is really excited to invest in Iran.  Stavridis noted in a Semafor interview:

And then if we do get to a serious ceasefire, which I think is not impossible at this time, what is the big investment opportunity in the Middle East? It could be Iran. There’s a lot of chaotic movement, but the potential of this country that’s two and a half times the size of Texas, 90 million people, demographics vertical, highly educated, a culture that’s deep and strong, they believe in themselves as Persians. If you follow the geopolitical trends to a happy ending, which is not impossible, Iran becomes a very interesting investment opportunity. It could look like the reconstruction of the Korean peninsula after the end of the Korean War.

It would be a natural fit for a politically connected private equity underwriter (PEU) like Carlyle to open an office in Tehran.  TechGod Joe Lonsdale's Palantir could take over spying on citizens from the mullahs.

PEU Legends and TechGods remaking Iran in the image of U.S. oligarchy?  It'd be a spectacular PEUtification, "something like no one has ever seen before," if they had not been looking in the American economic/government mirror every single day for the last two decades.

ProCap Joins Bitcoin Pump

Peter Atwater called the Procap Financial/Columbus Circle Capital Corporation deal "financial alchemy" as it combines two shaky ventures, a SPAC and a Bitcoin Treasury.  

The deal is interesting as the Columbus Circle SPAC is sponsored by Cohen & Company and managed by Cohen & Company executives.  Cohen & Company also serves as the "exclusive financial advisor" for the surviving entity, Procap Financial, and was a "co-placement agent in connection with the Preferred Equity Raise and Convertible Debt Raise."

The greed and leverage boys like to be on all sides of a deal, equity, debt, investment bank, financial advisory.  Nothing is arm's length anymore.  It's all bear hug. I believe they call it "fee earning synergy."

Peter Thiel, one of the greatest digital, libertarian alchemists, is backing the deal.  Rose Park Advisors and Fifth Down Capital. both Boston venture capital firms, invested alongside Thiel Capital.

The combination includes a preferred equity raise and convertible note sale.  Firms participating in those include:

Magnetar Capital, Woodline Partners LP, Anson Funds, RK Capital, Off the Chain Capital, Parafi, Blockchain.com, Arrington Capital, BSQ Capital Partners, and FalconX

Procap put that money to work already.   The yet to be combined firm bought $387 million worth of Bitcoin.

... the announcement notes that the TWAP for this purchase may differ from the “signing bitcoin price” referenced in the June 23 Business Combination Agreement between CCCM and Procap.

And who gets to pocket that?  I assume if it was going to cause a loss then the purchase would not have been made.

It all seems so loose.  But that is par for the course under Trump II, the digital Caligula.

AI: "It's Eating the Brain" as Well as Jobs

CEOs warned recently about AI eliminating jobs for humans, even those they promised in return for economic development funding.  

Former Microsoft founder Bill Gates believes AI will replace teachers and doctors.

All that sounds concerning to people wanting to be gainfully employed.  Two recent stories serve as counterbalance.  TechGod Elon Musk is redoing GrokAI because of "too much garbage."

For AI to purport to be the "correct version of human knowledge" is the usual TechGod blather.  

What does AI do to people's ability to learn and problem solve?  Just as social media made people anti-social:

A study showed artificial intelligence to harm the brain and its ability to conduct critical thinking.

AI is eating the jobs and also your brain.  So don't follow TechGod Reed Hoffman's coaching for the unemployed to use AI.  It could make one a very dull candidate.

Summa Health: Ohio Follows Massachusetts & Pennsylvania

The State of Ohio approved the sale of Summa Health to General Catalyst, a venture capital firm.  HealthExec reported:

It’s not entirely clear how business operations at Summa Health, a nonprofit, will change.

General Catlyst's CEO made it clear Summa would be the venue for its healthcare AI and other related services provided by fellow GC affiliates.  A press release referred to its "Silicon Valley's innovation engine."  Yes, the engine that includes intellectual property theft and replaces people with chatbots prone to hallucination, when not providing "garbage out" from "garbage in."  GC just put another $200 million into healthcare AI affiliate Commure.

VC's tend to swing harder for the fences than private equity underwriters (PEU).  The disaster of Massachusetts' Steward Healthcare under Cerberus Capital Management ownership was chronicled over a decade (Forbes).  A similar but much faster implosion occurred at Hahnemann Health in Philadelphia under Paladin Healthcare Capital (New Yorker).

The Carlyle Group, a politically connected PEU, sank ManorCare, a giant nursing home chain.  It did so under the watchful eye of former Medicare Chief Gail Wilensky.

Summa will be ground zero for the transformation of "healthcare as medicine" to "healthcare as software", no doctor needed.

Not mentioned in any article are the equity stakes Summa executives will obtain when the nonprofit switches over to a for-profit.  That conflict of interest is rarely identified prior to any takeovers.  It arose with Steward over time as several dividend bleedings sent big money to CEO Ralph de la Torre, M.D.

How can this happen yet again?  Politicians Red and Blue love PEU (and their new TechGod brethren), and increasingly, more are one.

I encourage Summa Health staff to buckle up.  VC firms operate their mechanical bull at level 10, while PEUs tend to be at level 8.  That means more bullshit slung and at greater distances.  Duck if you see Commanure flying at you.

Joint Commission for Healthcare Accreditation Partners with Snake Supplier

The Joint Commission for Healthcare Accreditation chose Palantir for an Artificial Intelligence partnership.  The announcement came in May with the Joint Commission's CEO citing: 

“Palantir’s emerging leadership in healthcare transformation"

Recent comments by Palantir CEO Alex Karp raise serious questions as the type of leadership provided by the Joint Commission's new supplier. Alex may not be a self administering drug addled TechGod, but he does want to spray opioid laced bodily fluids on people doing their job as financial analysts.  At least he said those words on CNBC.

Fellow TechGod and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale recently called out healthcare cartels at the Reagan Library.  Joe seemed pretty hyped up in the interview.  Lots of caffeine or some TechGod self medicating?

He wrote on X in February

Most hospitals are corrupt, backwards cartels & local monopolies, with state lobbying arms to keep out competition or threatening innovation. 

They often have talented staff (talented surgeons, some other great doctors & nurses), but often cynical or disgruntled administrators.

Another X post had Lonsdale's prescription for healthcare.

aggressive deregulation to allow innovation & competition, forcing EHRs to let patients port data to apps, and FTC breaking up local monopolies and PBM cartels.

How would one force EHRs to do anything without regulation?  Wouldn't breaking up hospital systems also be a regulatory intervention?

Joe wants the government to change market structure so his companies can win.  Lonsdale wants healthcare to become software.  Medicine is like intellectual property rights in AI, something to be steamrolled or worked around.

TechGods want healthcare as medicine to disappear, replaced by healthcare as software.  The Joint Commission picked a snake for partner with Palantir.  Their leadership is based on steamrolling competitors, manipulating market structure from the top down, selling billions in services to Uncle Sam and for the spoils to accrue to the TechGods.  

Healthcare as medicine needs people to do the work.  Healthcare as software does not.  The Joint Commission picked a snake supplier, one with endless venom.  I expected better.

The PEUples House

Politicians Red and Blue love PEU (private equity underwriters) and increasingly, more are one.  Congress lives this with their new tax bill which saves PEU preferred "carried interest" taxation, a highly unpopular tax dodge.  Both parties combined to do one better, allow greater deductibility of burdensome interest expense.  The greed and leverage boys make money by saddling affiliates with debt, often taking those borrowings and paying themselves a handsome dividend/special distribution.

The Lever reported:

...an accounting maneuver included in the bill creates more lenient standards for calculating the deduction as a share of total taxable income, which could boost private equity firms’ tax savings by an estimated 15 percent, netting the companies billions of dollars.

Billions more for politically connected billionaire PEU Legends.  There is no people's House.  It belongs to the PEUples.

LinkedIn: Jobs Down, Advice Up Says TechGod Founder

TechGod LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman painted a dark picture for college grads seeking entry level jobs.  

Congress is yet to tackle known social media harms for children, so they cannot be counted on to reign in billionaire TechGods worst instincts.

Because power and money talk, Congress has regulatory protections for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its Big Beautiful Bill.

The good news is I don't have to use the job killing AI bullet.  I can stay away from AI, all of them.

Hoffman's advice to college grads is to "use AI," the very thing taking away their employment opportunities.  Spoken like an arrogant TechGod, always pushing their book. 

Isn't LinkedIn supposed to help people find employment?  Don't they use AI?

Welcome to a world of endless billionaire TechGod enrichment opportunities, known as "Gush Up Economics."  Apparently, they are the only talent worth paying and paying and paying and paying.

Update 6-23-25:  A MIT study on ChatGPT showed how the mental crutch turns the human brain off.  Reid Hoffman wants college grads to be less capable of skills required for employment.  

Elon Musk is retraining his Grok AI because there is "too much garbage" being produced.

TechGods Join Military Reserves: Young Men

U.S. Tech executives joined the U.S. Army Reserves and were installed as lieutenant colonels in the newly established Detachment 201, an Executive Innovation Corps.  Weren't executives already working on behalf of the military via direct government contracts?  Doesn't the military already have a Defense Innovation Board?

The first members of this new elite unit include:

• Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer
• Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer of Meta
• Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s chief product officer
• Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab & former chief research officer for OpenAI

These highly paid tech executives with loads of company stock now have a military commission with commensurate pay and benefits.  The public has a right not to be excited that billionaire TechGods get yet another way to make money while working to eliminate millions of jobs across the country.

The words "oracle", "breaking defense" and "detachment" seem a perfect fit for this cataclysmic moment.  

The wholesale, unrestrained government embrace of AI charges ahead on all fronts with no consideration of how people are supposed to make money and support themselves in this bizarre future.

There's always the AI Emergency Air Corp where human soldiers rush out on the battlefield to save downed drones or some future politicians digital hairpiece.  Between those rushes of adrenaline human soldiers can ingest AI porn, fall "in love" with their time-limited AI chatbot and bet digitally until their hearts are discontent.

Lakers Go to TWG Global

Mark Walter is reported to be the new majority owner for the Los Angeles Lakers.  Walter is CEO of multiple billion dollar entities, TWG Global and Guggenheim.  

Walter's TWG owns stakes in a number of professional sports franchises.

It's not clear if Walter is using any United Arab Emirates money to take the majority stake.  Not long ago they did a "you fund my junk and I'll fund yours" deal.  

TWG is not the first to partner with Mubadala.  The Carlyle Group, a politically connected private equity underwriter (PEU), did so in 2007 and again in December 2024.Lakers fans should know 

Mark Walter's TWG is big into Artificial Intelligence and already partners with Palantir, the firm building digital dossiers on U.S. citizens.

They recently added Elon Musk's xAI to the mix.  Musk is fresh off scraping lots of U.S. government data into his xAI machines.

There are enough millionaires in the Los Angeles area to sell out The Forum.  The question is how many regular people will be afforded the chance to attend a game.  Does the price of admission also include having your phone scraped by TWG's AI?

I have an idea for a promotion:  Lost your job to TWG's AI?  That gets you included into a drawing for a free ticket to the Lakers vs. Kings.  That's the least billionaire TechGods and PEU Lords can do for the little people they plan to supplant.

Evil GENIUS Act Passes Senate

President Trump's drive for $200 billion in net worth got a significant boost today as the U.S. Senate passed the GENIUS Act, which provides for dollar backed stablecoins.

Trump II holds a 40% stake in USD1 stablecoin issuer World Liberty Financial, as well as 22.5 million $WLFI tokens.

I'm sure the 68 members of the Senate who voted "YES" were aware of Trump's holdings before they passed the evil GENIUS Act.  

I don't get stablecoins.  .It's like contracting out your currency to a middleman (who you already know works with criminals).

Matt Stoller wrote:

The crypto bill is the wholesale deregulation of finance at the behest of big money donors. It’ll lead to another financial crisis, but the people who supported it won’t be blamed. So yeah it makes sense for cynics to support it.

I imagine this will blow up much faster than Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the deregulation that enabled Wall Street to package financial garbage and push it on their clients.  It took nearly a decade for the elimination of Glass-Steagall to result in the Fall 2008 Financial Crisis.

It takes financial cops to catch financial criminals and those are in very short supply.  For Trump to hit his $200 billion net worth target "the pump must go on."  The Senate did their part today, as did Treasury Chief Scott Bessent.

Pump, pump, pump...

Update 7-3-25:  The Trump quid pro quo crypto chart shows:

TechGods: They're Eating the Jobs

CNBC interviewed Andrew Yang about the non-existent AI regulatory environment and the high likelihood of significant job loss.

Providing jobs for people is no longer part of a corporation's aim.  CEOs may wish to consider how they expect people in the future to pay for their products.  Henry Ford put considerable thought into this when he started his automobile company.

Yang believes in several years that many jobs will be replaced by AI and that the process will occur on a mass level fairly quickly.  Congress is still working on social media's predatory impact on children and has no appetite to deal with current or potential harms from AI, including widespread intellectual property theft.

TechGods -  "Our creations are valuable to society, yours are not, even though we incorporated yours into ours..."

It is the Age of Usurpment.