I have a feeling that the U.S. folding to Elon is probably a little bit like the Afghani government folding in three months to the Taliban. If Elon’s effectively seizing treasury—whether that’s government contracts, subsidies, or even direct financial influence—he’s doing it with a mercenary class rather than a bureaucracy or a true political movement.

But holding power is a whole different game. Trump’s week shows that there are many ways dementia manifests. The Gaza thing, is full-blown delusional, even by Trump standards. Proposing to make Gaza a U.S. colony in 2025 is like stepping into a time machine back to the 19th century, but without any of the practical mechanisms that made colonialism “work” back then (not that it ever really did in the long run).

Elon, Andreessen, and the new converts have misread what went wrong at the end of ZIRP. They’ve built a narrative that their struggles were due to government interference or lack of support, but the real issue was their own overleveraged, free-money-dependent corporate structures, which were unsustainable once interest rates normalized.

Going back to ZIRPlite isn’t a viable play—it’s just a desperate attempt to revive an unsustainable system. The problem isn’t the rates, but the underlying business models that rely on artificial conditions to survive.

Antiques dealer, machine psychologist. http://www.musicinphasespace.com