Feels like the year summary has a recency bias.

OK, and if you're really pressed for time, I had Claude real all the newsletters for the last year and give us the key insights Matt has provided!

My read: well, it's not quite as fun and funny as the usual newsletter. But nice when I don't have time, and I do like skipping all the rehashing of concepts that were explained in past newsletters.

Playing with Claude connected to my gmail so I can make it do tasks on the archive, which is fun, and also I am mystified why google can't do this for me. Here's today's Money Stuff, which it fetched and condensed while trying to keep @matt_levine humor:.

It has happened countless times in history and will happen again. Savers are hoarding wealth, without limit. Debtors are happy to spend today, without limit. The ultimate reckoning is not rich v poor but savers v debtors, and debtors are aligned with the gov, and will win.

Nope. USA will default. Stealth default by inflation or outright default, or revolution by the debtors, or a currency crisis (extreme form of default by inflation aka hyperinflation.). It sounds pessimistic but it is so obviously true I don't understand why we pretend otherwise.

The debt is unsustainable. It will be solved. Not by cutting expenses, I'm sorry, that should have happened 33 years ago when Ross Perot wanted to do it, we had a $300M deficit and a $4T deficit. You could have theoretically saved your way out of that. Not anymore.

There is just no way in the real world we live in that our government is going to decide to spend a lot less, piss off most of the voters, when there have been close to zero consequences. And even if they did, spend massively less, the problem just grows.

Just think about it honestly for a second. How on earth would we service $36T in debt, $100T in entitlements, on $5T in gross income? If you raised taxes, if you could in your wildest dream raise taxes on the rich what would revenue go to. $6T? You'd still be negative!.

The US gets around $4.5-5T in tax revenue. Lately we have been spending $1-3T more than that. We've had 3 surplus years in the last 55 years, and those just barely.

A little secret: it's too late. Sorry to bring the bad news. Sure, maybe there's value in forestalling the inevitable. On paper, $36 trillion. But that doesn't include all the entitlement commitments we have made, probably tripling that number.

I've been on the deficit issue for a decade, surprising that this is now such a mainstream concern. It was a glaring crisis $10 trillion ago. Maybe it's higher interest rates finally making the debt service bite. Not sure why so many have religion now.