The World After the Mar-a-Lago Plan, or Macroeconomic Regime Change

Hi! How’s everyone? Welcome back old friends, welcome new ones, and here’s a little Snowy hug.

Today we’re going to discuss whiplash. Confusion. Being Adults in the Room while the world’s seesawing around us. While Trump’s toying with the global economy like it was a plaything.

I’m going to teach you how to think about the economy, your life, your money, and more, in the middle of this mess and muddle. We’ve been talking a lot about that in sessions. The first part goes like this.

Keep your bearings. Listen to your gut. Don’t be made a fool of. Right now, greed is going to get a lot of people blown up. Your gut, on the other hand, says: I should walk away from this chaos. I should stay far, far away from it all. It’s right.

Let me explain.

Mania and Panic in the Markets

Right now, the markets are convulsing. Whipsawing. Up one day, down the next. And yet it feels like they’re teetering on the edge of a deep, dark abyss.

Anyone with an ounce of common sense understand the parallels to the 1930s by now.

And yet even for sensible people, the little demon of greed, a gargoyle with neon green eyes of jealousy eyes, says: maybe just a little bit more. Maybe just a little bit more of this stock, that market, this fund, that one. What if I just…

What if you just what? Ignore the warnings from every sane part of you? And dip your toe into the sulfuric acid bath of Trump’s madness? Dive headfirst into them, for just a quick refreshing scald? Sound like a good idea to you when I put it that way?

The markets are whipsawing because of greed. Because too many people who should know better, and many who do, can’t resist the temptation. Just one more percentage point. Just another day. Just a few more dollars.

They are going to get burned. Because acid is acid. It corrodes down to the bone. And at the moment they realize this, their mania will turn into panic. But then it will be too late. (This isn’t the smartest, largest institutional investors, by the way—they’re sitting all this out in a big way—it’s the little guys, and it’s going to be doubly sad in that sense.)

Don’t let this be you. Be an Adult in the Room. Think clearly. That begins with your gut, not just your mind, which is always plagued by little demons like greed, fear, insecurity, envy. That’s OK. It’s part of being human. But being an Adult is outgrowing them, too.

So I’m going to teach you how to think about all this well. So that you can think about it clearly. And not be one of the poor fools seduced by greed into ruin.

Macroeconomic Regime Change

What is happening now is a period of macroeconomic transformation. These periods take place every now and then. In history, at accelerating rates. In pre-modern times, maybe every five hundred years or so. By now, maybe every hundred years or so.

This time, it’s America who wants a very different global macro economy. Its President, more to the point, does.

The rest is noise.

There will be hiccups along the way. Yes, courts will block this and that, and judges may tamp down this, or disallow that. Don’t mistake that for anything other than what it is, which is noise.

You see how fast the tariffs were off—and then back on? Eventually, Trump will get what he wants. Even if its ameliorated form. Which is a very different macro economy. At least for America.

One that’s protectionist. In which America is isolationist. One in which there are all kinds of barriers and implicit taxes that, yes, Americans have to pay, like tariffs. Eventually, probably, as many of you have asked in sessions, one in which capital controls play a large part (that means: it’s hard to get your money out. And it already is, by the way.)

This is what the Mar a Lago Plan is about. It is a real plan, it’s not fiction, and they aren’t going to give up on it. Not now, not tomorrow, not at any point while they have power. In fact, they are already taking the next steps.

I’m going to come to those in just a moment.

Now. This is a period of transformation. And a process.

A period and a process. That means that it will take some time. Two to five years is how you should think about it. And it won’t proceed in one final, dramatic reconfiguration, like “Liberation Day,” but in many small steps, and even great leaps, over that period.

You must really understand that. Sit with it for a moment. Because part of the reason that people struggle to think clearly about all this is that they pay too much attention to daily noise. What happened today? Right this microsecond? The tariffs were off! Quick, buy! Now they’re back on! Oh no, sell! Doesn’t matter. Just one example.

See the point. Don’t pay too much attention to whatever the daily noise. Because the truth is it doesn’t matter very much. What does is that you understand what is really happening at the level of macro trends. Which is that the Mar a Lago Plan, a four step agenda, is happening.

And so the the global economy is being reconfigured. Not overnight, but over this period of two to five years. In a series of steps, and if one fails, they will just try another, and another, until, ultimately, they are successful, and even if they’re not 100% successful, that doesn't matter, because they will succeed at this project more than enough for history to say “the global economy was never the same after the second Trump years.”

So how will it be different?

What does your gut say?

Now I am going to prove to you that your gut is right.

The Mar a Lago Plan, or Section 899

Let me introduce you to Section 899.

What’s that? It’s part of a new bill that the House just passed. It says that the US will be able to tax foreign investors in new ways. Here’s how the FT sums it up:

“Section 899 could chill corporate investment and stifle demand for US assets when foreign investors are already pulling back from American markets. This retreat, hastened by the Trump administration’s tariff policies, comes as the US is more dependent than ever on foreign investors to buy its growing stock of government debt.”

Let me translate that for you. Section 899 paves the way for Step 2 in the Mar a Lago Plan. I’ve discussed all four steps with many of you in sessions, but for those whom I haven’t, let me make this one clearer. Step 2 in the Mar a Lago Plan is about shaking down those who own US government debt. I know, that sounds baffling and crazy, because it is. Let me explain.

Section 899 is going to make it possible for the US to demand taxes from foreigners, which is weird and disturbing enough, but in this case, for owning T-bills, or US government bonds.

So now let’s say you’re a foreign government, or a central bank, or a wealth fund. Now the US Government, meaning Trump, comes along and says, just because you own our T-Bills, you owe us money. Now you must pay us taxes.

That’s not how finance is supposed to work. When someone owns a T-Bill, the US government owes them money, not the other way around.

So as this becomes real, what’s going to happen as a consequence? A crash in the bond market. And not just a temporary one, but a permanent one. Because now if you own T-Bills, apparently, you’re going to owe Donald Trump money.

So would you want to own them? Of course not. Demand for them will plummet. They will be worth much, much less than before.

There will be a selloff probably like rarely before in history.

And the average person’s investment portfolio, which is about half T-Bills, if not more, is going to get shredded, as every government, central bank, and wealth fund in the world sells them off.

Now.

You don’t know this, which is sort of why I’m teaching it to you.

But that’s not really what I’m teaching you, because you can’t stay on top of all this stuff by yourself.

So what can you do?

Listening to the Warning Signs

You can listen to your gut.

Instead of buying into your greed. Which, like I said, is going to get a lot of people burned. If you’re sitting there desperately jonesing for another percentage point, another bump, another hit, of course you’re not paying attention to stuff like Section 899.

But if you’re listening to your gut, you know something is very wrong. With these guys. With their plans. With this whole mess. And even if you don’t go deep into the weeds, and learn about stuff like Section 899, then you won’t get burned.

See the point I’m making? It’s a subtle one. A deep one. It’s about consciousness. About strength. About vision and blindness. It’s not really about money at all.

It’s about listening to the warning signs. The warning signs are all there that idiotic, lethal things like Section 899 are starting to happen. But the question is whether you are wise and strong and calm enough to let yourself see them.

Or if you’ll be blinded by greed, and go into denial. Which is what Trump really wants. If enough people do that, then he can manipulate them any way he likes, and even if they’re disappointed here and there, they’ll never really think freely and clearly at all.

So now you must be an Adult in the Room and listen to the warning signs.

That doesn’t mean paying obsessive attention to daily happenings in the markets. Markets are delusional, paranoid, schizophrenic. They are incredibly poor cognitive, hyper-emotional, manic, infantile, narcissistic, malignant. This is capitalism. It’s a monster and a demon. It’s all the monsters and all the demons, from greed to envy to spite to contempt.

It means listening to, with, in your gut. Your gut already told that something was badly wrong here. I gave you the example of Section 899 for a reason, which wasn’t to point a finger at it, but to teach you that your gut is right.

Now let me finish the lesson.

The World After the Mar a Lago Plan

How will the world economy be different after this period of transformation?

Your gut already knows the answers. Just ask it, and then gut-check, literally, the following.

—The dollar will be sharply devalued, and no longer the basis of global finance.
—America won’t be center of the global economy anymore, because it won’t be trusted and respected as a nation with integrity, institutions, and rights.
—American bonds will be sharply devalued, because to Trump, everything is a shakedown, including the US debt itself.
—American stocks may survive intact, some of them, but holding them will grow more and more risky over time, and the easy days of buy-hold-and-forget are now over. So blindly betting on “the stock market” to rise isn’t going to work very well anymore.

Didn’t your gut sort of achingly agree with all that? Isn’t all that basically what it’s already been saying for the last however many months? So you know the answers.

The problem is that you are gaslit into believing you don’t know. By whom? By what’s left of American institutions. But they are the most foolish ones of all. Harvard didn’t see this coming, despite me telling it ten years ago. It made those of us who warned what was going to happen to it out to be “alarmists” and whatnot. And so here it is, in shock, reeling, staggering.

That’s not point-scoring, it’s me pointing out a lesson you must understand. All our institutions are gaslighting you into not believing in your own alarm signals going off. And they have been for a long time. But now all that is getting real.

Because the result of that is that too many people are being lured into Trump’s trap. It’s made of greed. Its edges glitter with temptation. But they will kill. People think they might just get rich. Might just. One more day. One more point. One more dollar. Maybe his plan will work. Maybe he doesn’t really mean The Bad Things. Maybe he’ll always stop short of the abyss. Maybe maybe maybe. Just maybe I’ll get rich.

The demon whispers, it’s neon green eyes lit with glee.

You are the Adult in the Room. Where do you think that ends? Your better angels have been telling you for a very, very long time. Only must of us have ignored them, hoping. That, too, is part of the human tragedy. It is Adam’s fall and Icarus’s fall both.

This is the choice and the moment between life and death. It always is. You must choose wisely. America didn’t. You still can.

As always, reach out if you need advice.

Lots of love,

Umair (and Snowy!!)

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