Welcome to the Weekly KAOS — UrbanKaoboy’s end-of-week roundup covering Macro and Geopolitics, where I try and tease out the most impactful bits of the week.

Themes of the Week

A dangled Iran peace deal and history’s biggest IPO are repricing the tape — but the Inflation that already seeped in has the Warsh Fed holding, not cutting

Tantalus stood neck-deep in water that receded every time he bent to drink, under fruit that lifted away every time he reached. This week the market got its own version — a “great settlement” to end the Iran war, dangled by Trump and disclaimed by Tehran within hours (”nothing finalised”), while Oil bled to its lowest level in months as the war premium drained out of the barrel. The tape is reaching for the grapes: futures up, Copper bouncing off the lows, and SpaceX — the biggest IPO in history — pricing straight into the euphoria. This is the Tantalus Tease in its purest form, and I think the consensus is mis-reading what it means for the Fed.

Here’s the asymmetry: a peace deal, if it actually lands, blunts the Oil edge of the Sword of Inelastic Supply — but it does NOTHING about the Inflation that already seeped in through the side door. The May print was hot, June converges on the same junction, the ECB just delivered the first G7 hike since the war began, and the economists’ consensus has now pushed the first Fed cut all the way into 2027. My read: the peace-tease leg lower in Oil has further to run than the “tail risk retired” crowd assumes — and the Warsh Fed still will NOT validate it with a cut, because the Vodka/Red Bull economy (Fiscal Red Bull in one hand, Monetary Depressant in the other) still needs reversing. Peace would change the headline; it would not unbox the Fed.

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It is my pleasure to be back with Tom on his own show this time, The Competent Investor Podcast. We talked all things Macro and Geopolitics.

Here is the interview on YouTube:

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Introduction
00:01:05 - Defining Macro Scenarios
00:07:40 - Iran War Macro Impact
00:10:22 - Tariffs and Demand Elasticity
00:16:16 - Macro Indicators Overview
00:21:25 - Consumer and Housing Metrics
00:23:30 - PPI CPI and Data Trust
00:27:38 - Federal Reserve Roundtable
00:31:36 - Goldilocks Scenario Outlook
00:35:53 - Oil Demand Destruction Risks
00:42:18 - Fed Rate Policy Challenges
00:46:07 - AI Productivity Boom
00:52:55 - Investment Positioning Strategy
00:56:06 - Urban Kaoberg Project
01:03:00 - Concluding Thoughts

Show Notes:

As always, I include detailed Show Notes, replete with links and charts.

Tom opened by asking me about my most recent post:

I will be referring a lot to this Macro Regime Matrix, accessible on UrbanKaoberg:

I referred back to my various contrarian writings on the Trump 2.0 Playbook (insofar as it pertained to the Tariff Wars) as a DEFLATIONARY set of policies:

We talked about why the Tariffs did not fuel a strong Inflationary impulse:

The current Supply Shock Inflation is totally different from the Demand Led Inflation of 2021 which was from an overloading of Fiscal Red Bull, whereas the Reverse Marshall Plan redirected Fiscal Red Bull flows, which allowed for Disinflationary Growth:

As I wrote in Into the Void, my hope is that these secular forces represent a “benign gravity,” but the risks are rising that Inflation Expectations get embedded:

One concern I have is politically-induced handouts to address the flagging consumer; if this happens, it would bring us back to the Biden-era Demand-Led Inflation in my opinion.

A Tour of Macro Indicators

I next walked through 5 categories of Macro Indicators: Inflation, Labor, Growth, Consumer, Housing.

You can walk through these indicators yourself on UrbanKaoberg:

My Macro Worries:

• I hope we don’t go back to an era of Fiscal Red Bull handouts, that would juice us back to 2021-style Demand-Led Inflation.

• I worry about the downstream effects of Oil-led Inflation.

A Nuanced Look at China’s Geopolitical Games with Oil

Could China be artificially keeping Oil prices low by drastically cutting its Refinery Runs while simultaneously stoking consumer-led Inflation by banning Product Exports?

I said this in yesterday’s Weekly KAOS:

For the first time, I am buying travel insurance because I am worried about jet fuel shortages this fall.

The LA Branch of the SF Fed

We talked a little about my recent experience participating on a roundtable at the Fed.

The Fed’s moderator was asking a lot about Input Costs, and that reflects the current angst facing the Fed, which I believe is boxed:

Should Warsh cut? No reason to cut given the Inflation and benign Unemployment

Should Warsh hike? Also no, because of Oil’s Demand Destructive tendencies and a buckling Consumer.

Oil is the Macro Linchpin

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of Oil and its potential downstream effects on Inflation.

I think this Oil Shock will further spur the eventual substitution of Natural Gas for Oil as America’s primary hydrocarbon dependency.

Iran is sowing the seeds of its own destruction from a leverage standpoint, because this Oil Shock will also inevitably redraw the Oil transport maps. I think Hormuz will play a far less important role in 3-5 years.

Geopolitically, it could behoove the US to let this play out given our ability to weather this storm better than our Geopolitical rivals, like China. But there would be serious collateral damage amongst friendlies in Europe and Asia and Rest of World (RoW).

The Gazillion Dollar Question:

Can the secular “benign gravity” of Disinflationary Growth offset the current Stagflationary backdrop with no obvious offramp in sight for the Iran War?

I am cautiously optimistic that we can get back into that Goldilocks zone, because I think the Disinflationary forces from AI will ultimately prove stronger, and we talked about the Productivity-led surpluses from the mid-1990s.

How I Position for this Tightrope

I wrote about my big picture Asset Allocation a while back and talked about how I try to construct a portfolio of return streams that are Orthogonal to broad market Beta and to each other.

Unlike many, I don’t have traditional passive Beta exposures and like to position in terms of Alpha With Asymmetry.

My UrbanKaoberg Journey

We talked a bit about my journey with AI-coding and UrbanKaoberg, as well as my views on SaaSpocalypse (or not):

I walked through a couple cool features of UrbanKaoberg:

MOATS

DCF Goak-Seeking

EARNS Instant Earnings / Transcript Analysis

I talked about my current Data Epistemology Project in UrbanKaoberg as well as my other Second Brain project:

If you haven’t checked out UrbanKaoberg yet, there is a Free Trial Offer for KAOBOY MUSINGS / URBANKAOBERG that is good until 6/30/26!

Conclusion: Beware the Fog of War

Is today’s Fog of War truly less than it was 2000 years ago? I am not so sure.

The markets will leave cookie crumbs as to what’s really going on, and that’s what I’m always watchful for.

The Return of the USD Wrecking Ball?

Something we did not cover but we should have covered is Oil’s link to a potential resurgence of the USD Wrecking Ball.

I think a resurgent USD Wrecking Ball could be a serious headwind to asset prices and is a currently overlooked risk that most are not even focusing on:

Check out the Free Trial Offer for KAOBOY MUSINGS / URBANKAOBERG that is good only until 6/30/26!

Welcome to the Weekly KAOS — UrbanKaoboy’s end-of-week roundup covering Macro and Geopolitics, where I try and tease out the most impactful bits of the week.

Themes of the Week

Three months into the Iran war, Hormuz is still the Macro linchpin while Gold quietly dethrones Treasuries on central-bank balance sheets (or not)

Three months into the Iran war and we still don’t have a deal. To borrow from Michael Every, the pattern is Zeno’s dichotomy dressed up as diplomacy — both sides agree on the broad shape of a 60-day ceasefire extension, a Hormuz reopening, a sanctions-for-constraints swap — and then keep halving the distance over sequencing and signatures.

I have another mythological mental model: The Tantalus Tease

Meanwhile the IRGC keeps lobbing drones at Kuwait’s airport, we keep hitting Qeshm, and BBC Verify’s satellite analysis now counts twenty US military sites damaged since the shooting started. This is the Han Solo asteroid-field run I laid out in last week’s Weekly KAOS — except Han hasn’t found the hole yet, and the chokepoint that was supposed to be a bargaining chip has become the IRGC’s principal leverage.

The week’s KAOS confirms the structural call: Oil is the Macro linchpin, Inflation is seeping back in via a side door nobody is watching (Chinese refined-product exports — Beijing refining only for domestic demand, exporting zero product, lifting global product prices straight into Western core), and the Mag7 tape is pushing into a 10-week run matched only by Dec ‘99, Aug ‘20, and Jun ‘24 — all three followed by drawdowns inside 40 trading days. Watch for my interview tomorrow about this.

In other news, the ECB made a big point in showing how Gold has overtaken US Treasuries as the world’s top reserve asset, 27% versus 22%, with total USD-denominated reserves down to 42% from roughly 60% twenty-five years ago.

Too bad they forgot to tell you that it was mainly because of the price movement of Gold:

The Sword of Inelastic Supply cuts both ways, and this week’s carnage in Gold prices reminds you why it won’t supplant the UST as the primary central bank reserve asset.

My standing view is that USD/UST hegemony rests on geographic balance-sheet assets — waterways, arable land, blue-water navy — that no rival can match, and I still think that’s right at the level of National Power.

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Welcome to the Weekly KAOS — UrbanKaoboy’s end-of-week roundup covering Macro and Geopolitics, where I try and tease out the most impactful bits of the week.

Themes of the Week

A fraying Iran ceasefire, a hawkish Waller pivot, and a SpaceX-shaped question mark over the entire AI capex trade

Han Solo’s asteroid field is still the right mental model — and this week the asteroids got bigger, faster, and started shooting back. CENTCOM lit up Iranian missile sites and small boats while the White House simultaneously briefed that a 60-day ceasefire, a Hormuz reopening, and a frozen-asset release were “in draft.” Tehran’s answer was to target a US base and let Trump publicly accuse them of stalling. Markets, doing their best C-3PO impression of “Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1,” instead pulled a Han and bid risk into a historic weekly run. Never tell me the odds, indeed.

Underneath the geopolitical fireworks, three slower-moving plates are spinning. Waller went on tape supporting the removal of the FOMC’s easing bias and refused to rule out hikes — at the same moment UMich sentiment printed the lowest reading in the survey’s history and 1-yr inflation expectations jumped to 4.8%. That is a genuinely ugly setup for a Fed that’s already drifting hawkish, and the dollar/rates tape is starting to price it. UBS, for its part, named the $38T federal debt — 122% of GDP heading to 175% — as *the* dominant tail risk. Their bull case? An AI-productivity burst on the 1990s analog. Which brings us to the third plate: Tilson calling OpenAI “the greatest cash-burning furnace of all time” and Stratechery admitting no model justifies SpaceX’s IPO unless you underwrite data centers in orbit.

The honest read: this is a market levitating on a peace deal that hasn’t closed, a Fed that may not cut, and a capex cycle whose terminal value lives on a slide deck. The throughline isn’t fear — it’s that the asteroid field rewards pilots who know which rocks are real and which are CGI. Welcome to the KAOS.

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I was part of a roundtable at the LA branch of the SF Federal Reserve Bank last week, where I summarized some of these views. Each branch of the Fed conducts …

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Remember the Mullet of the ’80s — “business in front, party in back”? I think LLM coding produces “Mullet Code”: professional in front, KAOS in back. This piece is about taming the KAOS.

When I wrote about the origin story of UrbanKaoberg in "There And Back Again" two months ago, I talked about the “euphoria of infinite productivity.” I had gone from not…

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Consider this post to be a “Meta-Directory” of all of my Substack Sub-Directories grouped by Topic.

I will keep this post pinned so that subscribers can access this directory easily without having to wade through the archives in chronological order.

I was honored to be a guest speaker at UCLA Anderson School of Management’s Entrepreneurship Leadership Development Program (ELDP), a mentorship program for MBA students.

The ELDP is a mentorship program for select UCLA MBA students to meet monthly with their CEO/Entrepreneur mentors in a format that resembles a YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization) Forum…

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Introducing UrbanKaoberg.com:

“800+ commits. 55+ modules. 9 asset classes. 44 API endpoints. Almost 100K lines of code. All in less than a month by a person who hadn’t written code in 35 years.”

I built UrbanKaoberg.com in less than a month with AI. This piece is about my journey down one of the most frenetic, creative rabbit holes I have experienced and …

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Given the huge amount of social media misinformation around CLO Equities and CLO Equity CEFs, I decided to distill a FAQ from the many daily private chat threads I write about this topic. I will use ECC as my primary example, since it is the company and management team I am most familiar with in the space.

In case you missed it, here is Part I:

Today’s pi…

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Given the huge amount of social media misinformation around CLO Equities and CLO Equity CEFs, I decided to distill a FAQ from the many daily private chat threads I write about this topic. I will use ECC as my primary example, since it is the company and management team I am most familiar with in the space.

Disclaimer: This is a compilation of my publicly…

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2/16/26: Episode 12 — Meredith Angwin

I first came across Meredith’s book Shorting The Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid in 2022 when I was researching a policy paper on the topic of US National Power that I eventually co-presented at West Point in early 2023.

Meredith’s work elucidated for me a critical example of how the United States is “long on resources, but short on policies,” whereas our biggest Geopolitical rival China is “short on resources, but long on policies” — especially when it comes to the critical issue of Energy Security.

This conversation is extremely topical because:

If AI is potentially the Apex Predator of Capital Light industries, it is important to understand what fuels that Apex Predator — Electricity.

My hope is that this interview not only exposes some of the fragilities embedded in the current US Electric Grid, but hopefully also presents some ideas for solutions and hedges to America’s Energy Achilles' Heel.

Biography

Meredith Angwin is an energy analyst and the author of Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of our Electric Grid, published in 2020. She also has a Substack publication endearingly entitled “The Electric Grandma” that focuses on the reliability of the electric grid.

Meredith has studied and participated in grid over-sight and governance for the bulk of her career. For four years, she served on the Coordinating Committee for the Consumer Liaison Group associated with ISO-NE, her local grid operator. She teaches courses and presents workshops on the electric grid.

As a working chemist, Meredith Angwin headed projects that lowered pollution and increased reliability on the electric grid. Her work included pollution control for nitrogen oxides in gas-fired combustion turbines, and corrosion control in geothermal and nuclear systems. She is inventor on several patents. She was one of the first women to be a project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute where she led projects in renewable and nuclear energy.

Meredith has a Master’s Degree in Chemistry from the University of Chicago.

Where to find Meredith Angwin

Shorting The Grid at the Amazon Store: https://amzn.to/4qJ1P3V

X: https://x.com/MeredithAngwin

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredithangwin/

Substack: “The Electric Grandma”

The Electric Grandma

Meredith Angwin's Substack. In favor of reliable electricity for all.

By Meredith Angwin

Show Notes

As usual, I am sharing my outline for this conversation. It contains some questions for follow-up research that we did not have time to cover in our conversation.

Interview Agenda for KAOS THEORY 12: Meredith Angwin

Topic: Grid Fragility & Energy Security

• Intro / Bio

• Opening Premise: I’ve observed in a past lecture I gave on Energy Security that the “US is long on resources / short on policies” whereas China is short on resources but long on policies.”

• Brief History of Utility Deregulation

  • Compared with Telecom and Airline Deregulation

    • Q: How did Utility Deregulation result in higher consumer prices?

  • Brief explanation of the before and after of Utility Deregulation

    • Q: Can you explain how RTOs work and where grids are worse off?

• Sources of Grid Fragility in the US

  • Meredith’s “Failed Trifecta”:

    • Dependence on Renewables

      • Intermittent Renewables (wind/solar) don’t provide “firm” power, which then relies on “just-in-time” Natural Gas peaker capacity

    • “Just In Time” Natural Gas Peaker Capacity

    • LNG Import Constraints

  • Differentiate between types of Grid Capacity:

    • Nameplate Capacity

      • Q: Why do policymakers keep confusing capacity with reliability?

      • Q: Is there any realistic scenario where intermittent sources form true baseload without massive overbuild?

    • Peaker Capacity

      • Q :How is Natural Gas Peaker Capacity different from Natural Gas Baseload Capacity?

    • Baseload Capacity

      • Viable Baseload Sources

        • Coal

        • Nuclear

        • Geothermal

        • Natural Gas (CCGTs - Combined Cycle Gas Turbines)

          • Q: Explain CCGTs and why Natural Gas Baseload via CCGTs can overcome the JIT liabilities of Natural Gas Peaker Capacity?

• US Energy Achilles’ Heel Trifecta (“Premature Electrification” + AI Data Center Buildout + LNG Export Demand)

  • Context: US electricity demand was flat for 15 years, but this trifecta is converging at the same time

  • Natural Gas Paradox: Meredith, you highlight the fragility of “just-in-time” gas. I see AI Data Centers as “high load factor” users who want 100% power, 24/7. Coal and nuclear store fuel on site, but Natural Gas is “Just In Time” and depends on pipelines, compressors, electric power to move gas, yet it also seems to be the lowest hanging fruit for Baseload

    • Q: Given the decommissioning of Coal and the persistent NIMBYism/time-to-market and cost disadvantages of Nuclear, do “all roads lead to Natural Gas”?

    • Q: Do you see any other bridge solution that can compete with Natural Gas in terms of cost and time-to-market advantages?

  • Transmission Bottlenecks: JPM data shows long-distance transmission projects take 15-20 years and have been declining for 40 years

    • Q: Does “behind-the-meter” colocation solve really anything given the bypass of transmission bottlenecks without the bypass of generation bottlenecks, or are we headed to inevitable Electricity Inflation?

• Concluding Questions

  • Q: How did we go from “Resource Advantages” to “Policy Disadvantages”?

    • We’re chasing carbon reduction but ignoring Grid Resilience and basic physics.

  • Q: What are we getting right? Are there any case studies of successful Energy Grids in America?

    • Where they are keeping adequate Base Load

  • Q: If you were the “Grid Czar” in a Trump 2.0 administration, how would design the “Perfect Grid?

  • Q: How do you deal with the US Energy Achilles’ Heel Trifecta and solve for real-world constraints of ESG/costs/time-to-market/NIMBYism at the same time?

Further Reading

The topic of Energy Security and Policy is near and dear to my heart, and I have written at length about it. Here are some of my past writings you might be interested in:

Recent pieces in 2026:

Guest lecture on the Geopolitics of Energy (US vs. China comparisons):

Compendium of Climate Change / ESG pieces:

Compendium of Oil Macro pieces:

“Guy Adami interviews Michael Kao (@UrbanKaoboy), discussing the historic moves in gold and silver, the debate over fiat debasement versus speculative positioning, and why charts showing central bank gold eclipsing Treasury holdings can be misleading because much of the c…

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Glad to be back with Max Wiethe on Monetary Matters to discuss my recent piece about the US Energy Achilles’ Heel and the shift in hydrocarbon dependency from oil to natural gas.

As always, please see my Show Notes thread that follows.

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A confluence of factors, led by ESG mandates of the last decade, has created an Energy Achilles’ Heel for America, and the AI race may end up being one of the key arrows in that Heel.

Achilles, the mythical Greek hero of the Trojan War, was the son of Peleus, a mortal king, and Thetis, a sea nymph. To give Achilles invulnerability, Thetis dipped the infa…

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This fall, I traveled for four weeks, bookended by a Socratic seminar at Oxford in mid-September and an adventure retreat in Iceland in mid-October. I deci…

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12/6/25: Episode 11 — Barry Strauss, Redux

Studying ancient history can really give us long-term perspectives to help us overcome recency bias in modern geopolitics.

Barry Strauss, best-selling author of many books on ancient history as well as Senior Fellow at Hoover and Professor Emeritus at Cornell, returns to KAOS THEORY for a sweeping conversation that bridges ancient history and modern geopolitics.

Drawing on his new book, Jews vs Rome, Barry explores how Israel’s struggle to survive between rival powers mirrors ancient Judea’s perilous position between Rome and Parthia, and why geography, alliances, and internal cohesion have always mattered as much as military strength.

From the deep historical ties between Jews and Iranians to the internal divisions that have repeatedly proven as destructive as any external enemy, the discussion uses the past as a lens through which to understand today’s Middle East, America’s shifting role, and the timeless challenge of leadership in moments of civilizational stress.

Barry is a Corliss Page Dean Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution as well as the Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies Emeritus at Cornell University. He is a recognized authority on the subject of leadership and the lessons that can be learned from the experiences of the greatest political and military leaders of the ancient world (Caesar, Hannibal, Alexander, among many others). These lessons apply to business and government leaders of today who are faced with complex issues that are both challenging and often defy easy solutions.

In addition to writing ten books, Strauss has spoken at the Hoover Institution, the Center for European Policy Analysis and many universities, institutes and war colleges here and abroad as well as for AXA Investment Managers and Cornell Executive Business Education. His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the L.A. Times. Most recently, Strauss has been interviewed on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, A&E, the History Channel, the BBC and PBS.

Where you can find Barry Strauss:

Website: https://barrystrauss.com/

Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Barry-Strauss/author/B0045ANWJM?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1731250431&sr=8-1&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barrystrauss.author

X: https://x.com/barrystrauss

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barry-strauss-8848702/

Show Notes

Once again, I am sharing my outline for this conversation. It contains some interesting historical details that we did not get to cover in our conversation.

KAOS THEORY 11: Barry Strauss Redux – Ancient lessons that still shape the modern Middle East.

Interview Agenda:

1. Re-Intro/Motivation

• Studying ancient history to overcome RECENCY BIAS:

• Today’s focus

  • Examining the geopolitics between Israel and Iran through the lens of ancient history

  • Examining leadership styles from ancient history vs. now

2. What can we learn about Israel/Iran from Ancient Rome?

• Discuss recent article: “Israel vs. Empire”: https://www.thefreedomfrequency.org/p/israel-vs-empire

  • “Israel is a small land located between great powers. ‘Twas ever thus.”

    • Judea as a small power caught between imperial systems—Egypt, Persia, Rome.

    • How did Israel’s geography make it perpetually vulnerable yet also resilient?

  • “Israel needs to look east as well as west…The hatred that the Islamic Republic of Iran holds for Israel is a historical aberration.”

    • “History suggests that Israel and Iran are natural friends.”

    • Iran / Parthia

      • Ancient Iran during our period of examination:

        • Achaemenid Persia/Cyrus the Great

        • Parthian rule

        • Sasanian rule – Judea renamed Palestine by Romans

    • Netanyahu reading Jews vs. Rome

  • “The Talmud concluded that it wasn’t the Romans who destroyed Jerusalem. Rather, it was the “senseless hatred” of Jew vs. Jew.”

    • Comparison of Israel’s internal disunity with the internecine fighting during the The Great Revolt of 66-70 CE

    • Barry’s Freedom Frequency piece draws a haunting parallel between Jerusalem’s civil strife in 70 CE and Israel’s internal divisions before the October 7 attacks.

• New book: Jews vs. Rome:

  • Motivation: Why do wars fought two millennia ago—feel so urgently relevant in 2025, and what motivated you to retell these stories now?

  • Chronology:

    • 63 BCE: Roman Republic under Pompey conquers Judea and makes it a client state. Ironically, the Jews invited the Romans in to settle a dynastic dispute. They didn’t expect Pompey to reduce their territory, to demote their king to tetrarch (subordinate ruler), and to desecrate their holiest shrine.

      • Lingering resentment: The loss of independence led to a constant undercurrent of discontent and fueled messianic hopes and dissident movements.

      • Internal division: The Jewish population was often divided between those who sought to cooperate with Roman rule and those who were determined to rebel.

      • Judea eventually brings in Parthians, Rome re-conquers Judea as Parthian client state

    • 37 BCE: Herod the Great is installed as a client king of Judea during the time of Augustus’ ascension to role of Emperor

    • 3 Major Jewish Revolts

      • 66-70 CE: The Great Revolt

        • This is the most well-known conflict. It was sparked by religious clashes and political unrest and culminated in the Roman siege and destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE. The war ended with the Siege of Masada, where Jewish rebels chose mass suicide over surrender to the Romans and resulted in the destruction of Temple.

      • 116-118 CE: The Diaspora Revolt (aka Kitos War)

        • Rebellions during Trajan’s Parthian campaigns, and perhaps one of reasons why Trajan fails in Parthia. This uprising was ignited by heavy taxes across the Roman Empire and occurred in Jewish communities outside of Judea.

      • 132-146 CE: The Bar Kokhba Revolt

        • The final major Jewish rebellion against Roman rule, which was ultimately and brutally crushed. Occurred under Hadrian, and the guerrilla campaigns caused Hadrian to pull legions from Britain

  • Parallels to today?

    • Religious conflict: clash of worldviews between monotheistic Jewish beliefs and Roman polytheism/emperor worship? Barry thinks that people overdo this: “The Romans didn’t have a religious problem with the Jews: they had a political problem. Likewise, the Jews (or at least the Jewish rebels) had a political problem with Rome: they wanted to be independent. True, on both sides, but especially for the Jews, politics had a strong religious dimension, which complicated matters. But the Romans didn’t really care what god/s you worshipped as long as you were subordinate to Rome and as long as you included the emperor in your worship (which the Jews, in fact, did: they sacrificed on behalf of the emperor in the Temple).”

    • Geopolitical struggle: The revolts were influenced by the larger geopolitical struggles between Rome and the Parthian Empire.

    • Internal strife: internal conflicts, divisions, and complex figures within the Jewish population, such as the Jewish commander turned Roman historian, Josephus, and the Jewish princess Berenice

      • Similar to some of the sectarian strife amongst its Arab neighbors of today, as explored in KAOS THEORY 10:

      • In both ancient and modern Israel, internal conflict has preceded catastrophe. Can Israeli democracy sustain its vitality without collapsing into factionalism? Barry: “It’s not just a question for Israeli democracy but for American democracy as well. Here too factionalism, which we tend to call polarization, is rife.”

    • Do today’s citizens have “skin in the game” like ancient citizens?

      • Barry: “For all its flaws, Israel is a society whose citizens – at least its Jewish citizens – know what they’re all about. And, when push comes to shove, they put their lives on the line for their country. Can we say the same of Americans? This brings up my two “Hobby Horses”:

        • Hobby Horse 1: Conscription. “Or, if you prefer, national service – gives people a sense of purpose.”

        • Hobby Horse 2: Education. “A healthy society teaches its young people history, and it paints a mostly positive picture of its country’s history and current status. It’s dangerous and self-destructive to offer young people a negative view of their country.”

3. What can we learn about leadership styles from ancient history?

• Recent article: “To Understand Trump, Look to the Roman Empire”: https://time.com/7327223/understand-trump-roman-empire/

  • Trump’s leadership approach in ME is “very Roman”:

    • Emphasis on personal relationships

      • Unconventional choices in Witkoff and Kushner

      • Is Trump’s reliance on family emissaries (Kushner, Witkoff) and direct relationships an echo of the Roman system of “friendship” between rulers?

  • Use of Carrots vs. Sticks

    • “Romans were masters at using rewards and punishments to manage foreign states…”

  • Pax Romana vs. Pax Americana comparisons

    • Romans leaned on its legions in the end

    • Trump differs from Romans in leaning on “allies to do hardest jobs while keeping Americans out of harm’s way.”

    • Rome’s peace was built on dominance and deterrence. Is America’s “peace through strength” the same?

      • “Yes, but I would add that both Rome and America offered/offer positive things as well.”

      • “Also, although America has done some brutal things (e.g., Hiroshima), it is less brutal than Rome.”

  • Alignment of Interests

    • “Nations don’t have friends, they have interests.”

    • How does Trump try to align the incentives of the ME with those of America?

    • Can the Gaza Peace Accord endure, and what are the implications for the Abraham Accords?

• Broader lessons of Leadership from ancient history?

  • Book: Masters of Command

    • Leadership lessons from 3 great generals of ancient history:

      • Alexander the Great

      • Hannibal

      • Julius Caesar

    • 10 qualities of successful commanders

      • Ambition

      • Judgment

      • Leadership

      • Audacity

      • Agility

      • Infrastructure

      • Strategy

      • Terror

      • Branding

      • Divine Providence.

    • How would you grade the current Administration on this list?

    ---

    If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure you check out:

I am pleased to be a first-time guest on the Debt Serious Podcast to talk about Private Credit and CLOs. We delved into the recent misplaced fearmongering on CLOs and why it spells opportunity.

Disclaimer: This interview talks about some Idiosyncratic positions that I currently hold and actively trade. I use the examples to illustrate my broader points a…

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