Two Alarms: Your Investments and Your Country February 26, 2025 YOUR COUNTRY Jonathan Rauch writes: Seeking to make the world safe for gangsterism, Putin used propaganda, subversion, and other forms of influence to spread the model abroad. Over time, the patrimonial model gained ground in states as diverse as Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and India. Gradually (as my colleague Anne Applebaum has documented), those states coordinated in something like a syndicate of crime families—“working out problems,” write Hanson and Kopstein in their book, “divvying up the spoils, sometimes quarreling, but helping each other when needed. Putin in this scheme occupied the position of the capo di tutti capi, the boss of bosses.” Until now. Move over, President Putin. So worth reading in full! Joe O’Neill in the New York Review: We’re in new territory—systemic democratic collapse. Things are coming at us fast. It’s hard to know which way to turn. . . . Democrats have disgraced themselves. They’ve looked terrified and defeated and confused. They’ve hidden behind consultant-devised talking points about grocery prices. They’ve cast votes to confirm Trump’s extremist cabinet nominees. Jim G.’s prescription: Democrats must stop conducting business as usual! > Declare an emergency—an ongoing lawless authoritarian takeover! > Designate a leader of the opposition — someone vigorous, passionate, and credible! [My choice.] > Hold a daily press briefing on the Capitol steps calling out every lie and illegal action of the previous day! > Refuse to cast any vote, confirm any nominee, agree to any unanimous consent resolution, until Republicans commit to return to the rule of law! There is a time for exclamation marks, and this is one of them. Join Indivisible! Spread DIS-disinformation! YOUR INVESTMENTS I think there’s a good chance of a major stock market decline in the not-too-distant future (did it start last week?). I could be wrong, of course. But you wouldn’t be alone if you liquidated some of your holdings (especially in retirement accounts where no tax is incurred). The world’s wisest investor, Warren Buffett, would be right there beside you, with well north of $300 billion on the sidelines, ready to scoop up bargains, should the bottom fall out. I’ve sold very little, because most of my holdings are “special situations” not all that closely correlated to the market as a whole. Take CHRB — suggested here two years ago at $13.50 (currently $18.89), a preferred stock paying an 8.5% dividend on its $25 face value — $2.125 per year, 53 cents each quarter (so 11% or so currently). That’s a pretty good current yield, and it is enhanced by the promise of redemption 6 quarters from now at its full $25 value. Should all go as planned, that would be a further 32% gain from here regardless of what the stock market does. Or take PRKR. If its lawsuits go well, the stock will do well. If they tank, it will tank. How this rank speculation fares is largely independent of the broader market. Or take OPRT. My fantasy is to imagine that I am a fund manager who owns 100,000 shares of TSLA, purchased a few years ago at $70. It’s plunged from its high but still over $300 a share (at least as of last night) sporting a price earnings ratio well over 100 . . . and I’ve read Warren Buffett’s latest annual letter and I’m getting nervous . . . so I sell it — and have $30 million to invest. Where do I put it? Maybe I see that OPRT is projecting earnings of $1.10-$1.30 a share and that, closing yesterday at $7.20, it’s selling for 6 times projected earnings. So maybe I think about buying 1 million shares. In a real panic, everything, certainly including OPRT, would fall. But (I like to think) OPRT would be the kind of stuck that bobbed back up pretty fast. Remember! Only with money you can truly afford to lose!