The Review by Philo

The (Meme) Review by Philo

Around the world in 80 memes.

There's so much happening in the world – and most people don't understand half of it.

Only a curation of high-quality memes can capture the essence without turning this into a 10,000-word essay.

The Review by Philo is a free newsletter by Philoinvestor.

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Fiscal Decay

The Trump/Bessent Administration promised fiscal restraint – explaining that this was the last opportunity for the US to change its ways and get the debt and budget in order...

Instead, the CBO predicts a $2.1 trillion deficit for 2026 – after $1.8 trillion for 2025.

The yield on the US 10-Year made a new ~20 year high and Scottie B (i.e. the Treasury) is buying back his debt to try and contain the situation...

US government debt is now at FORTY TRILLION DOLLARS!

Which puts me in a very uncomfortable position trying to understand what the objective is here..

In fact, we explained the big picture of what's happening 3.5 years ago in Peak American Empire.

Which now brings us to the war in and around Iran...

Memes are Warfare

The speaker of the Iranian Parliament has now resorted to using memes – not only to signal his country's objectives and strategy, but to mock his American opponents.

You can check Ghalibaf's memes here – last month he posted this:

"What's the plan for bonds, import frozen yields?"

This is the monthly chart of the US 10-Year Yield – not going well.

Yields just broke through 5% – a level of great psychological importance. This means the US has to pay more to borrow money from the markets.

This isn't great when you're already paying trillions in interest!

💡

So what does Iran want to achieve?
All explained here in a tweet from March 3rd.

The Fed

And while Trump was shouting for lower rates, the Fed just hiked rates to 4%.

August CPI for the year just hit 3.4%.

Crude at $100, global logistics in shambles and max uncertainty isn't helping the inflation picture.

But Donald thinks because he's POTUS – he should have absolute control of whatever happens in the US...

Rather, even his own people are just "managing" him to do what they think needs to be done.

Let's see who prevails and if the US follows through on this impending attack against Iran this time.

Diesel & the Midterms

Diesel prices in the US are up ~100% since the beginning of the year – and now at around $6.5 per gallon.

This isn't great for Trump with 5 weeks left to the Midterms and his approval ratings performing abysmally.

It's looking bleak for Republicans – and Democrats may win back both Chambers of Congress in November.

That would be a major defeat for Trump and MAGA.

Meanwhile, in a sign of utter desperation – the Trump Administration is flirting with banning Diesel Exports to contain domestic price spikes.

But while that may do the job in the short-term, and make Americans feel protected from problems outside the country. It will boomerang 100 times stronger.

Physical Vs Digital

Yoda said it best when he said...

Meanwhile the spiking price for oil is depreciating your purchasing power even more.

Which brings us to the stock market...

The Wealth Effect

We hypothesised in the Trump UNO Reverse Card piece that Donald just may have a way out of his troubles.

Notice the cover image with Donald pulling out a glorious UNO reverse card as he quarrels between 3 rocks squashing him... Art of the Deal?!?

The UNO reverse card we teased in that piece was actually AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)..

But while ShitAI Labs were dragging their feet with made-up security concerns – as an excuse for their IPO-non-ready financials, Zuck came out of nowhere with Meta Muse!

The result was a 5% rally in the Nasdaq over two weeks with AMD and Intel rallying >20% each..

So basically we went from this...

To this real quick, again!

Creating a sort of bifurcation in terms of how humanity sees AI now..

By the way, are AI Labs too big to fail?

OAI and Anthropic are ramping up to be the two largest IPOs since SpaceX.

Seems like you should have a view if these two will end up in the way of META and AMZN – or absolute zeros?

Educated view with nuance here.

The Bifurcation...

But all this carries a paradox – or a few.

We went from AGI to will solve all our needs, boost productivity and make us all rich – to AGI will end humanity.
And we will go from – the AI Brothers (OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX) will 100X – or they will go to zero...

The world is getting harsher in the back end – while the stock market is making new highs. And it's getting even harsher as an ascending East is out to eat the competition's lunch.

Competition being the West...

If you don't get my point see the reaper knocking on doors meme below.

East Vs West

Xi just concluded his trip to the US with talks about "US-China co-operation on AI".

You know, the kind of co-operation enemies do 👀

Meanwhile, the reason why Anthropic and OpenAI are squeezed right now is not only from competition between themselves...

But from cheaper and open-source models, primarily from China.

Remember how militant the US was against the ascendance of China as an AI power? Well... so much for that co-operation.

MAGA Vs "The Wealth Effect"

Donald has a problem...

One of the greatest points of contention from Trump's voter base is his putting AI over their communities.

On one side, Donald needs AI to keep the stock-market money printer going brrrr.

On the other, he badly needs MAGA in the upcoming elections.

As the Greek saying goes: "If you run two churches, you steal from one."

Labubu Larry and Oracle

And it doesn't matter if you're best friends with Donald Trump, running one of the most profitable companies in the world (i.e. Oracle) and investing in the greatest technology of our times (i.e. AI) – you can still mess up, BIG TIME.