A Golden Break

A break from the book as I'm just not happy with Chapter 2 yet.

By Michael W. Green

Feb 23, 2025 10:18 PM

13 min. read

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Summary

• Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) and Writing Challenges: Struggling to write Chapter 2 of the book. If you’re here for that, go away.
• Analysis of Trumpism and Historical Analogies: Trumpism as a shift from the U.S. as a "Good Power" to a "Great Power," drawing comparisons to historical cycles described in Neil Howe’s "The Fourth Turning" and ancient Rome’s Jugurthian War. The future of American democracy is a "Schrodinger’s Cat" — neither alive nor dead… or is it neither dead nor alive
• Active Management, Tokenization, and AI Integration: There’s promise in tokenization and the development of sophisticated structured products that offer stability without traditional leverage. They highlight how AI, particularly ChatGPT, has enhanced productivity and efficiency in financial modeling and product development. Now we just need to tools of tokenization which are coming.

The Main Event (or is it Main Lament?)

I immediately cursed myself by arguing the book was progressing smoothly as I stumbled in Chapter 2 with attempts to explain the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) without conveying the disdain reserved for later chapters. We’ve got to be fair to contemporary history, and I try to listen to my family when they tell me my writing is too dense — even when they are wrong. With that said, it’s written… just not well enough for release. “I am the very model of a modern major procrastinator!”

If you’re here solely for the book, I apologize. If you’re here for cogent analysis, I also apologize.

I feel I owe it to my readers to touch on Trump’s first month and a revisiting of “A Choice to Believe.” I’d also like to expand on a semi-cryptic tweet I shared on Friday:

And given the price action in gold, I figured it was worth using that as a framing tool for some thoughts on the future.

Let’s do Trump first.

Earlier this week, Ben Hunt of Epsilon Theory shared his thoughts in a provocative essay. While Ben is occasionally histrionic, I found the essay important as it introduces a key thought: