The Matterboard is our weekly assessment of what’s worth your attention and what isn’t. Here’s last week’s edition, here’s an overview of the project, and here’s the full archive.
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Here’s what’s new on The Matterboard:
PAY ATTENTION ⚠️
The Iran war has cost Americans $88 billion so far, including $48 billion in higher gasoline costs, according to a Brown University tracker. That’s about $670 per household for a war now in its sixth month. President Trump’s desperation to find a way out is becoming farcical. On August 18 Trump posted a schlocky map of the Strait of Hormuz with the label, “New US Territory.” Iran responded with a social media post claiming that California is now Iranian territory. This is all fake juvenile bravado. Trump can’t end the war and we are paying the price.
Trump’s latest self-dealing scheme is a plan to turn his crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, into a bank. That will allow it to manage institutional money and take fees from anybody seeking to curry favor with the president. No US president has ever owned a major stake in a bank or attempted graft so brazenly.
[More: Trump’s biggest grift yet]
Another Democratic Socialist beat a more mainstream candidate in a prominent Congressional race. Angie Nixon upset polling favorite Alex Vindman to become the Democratic Senate nominee in Florida. That energized liberals—but made it far more likely Republicans will hold the seat. The Brookings Institution points out that far-left candidates aren’t that numerous, even if they get an outsized amount of attention. The risk for Democrats is that a handful of candidates that seem extremist to centrist swing voters tarnish the whole party.
MIGHT GET SPICY 🤔
ABC and its parent Disney are suing the Federal Communications Commission for threatening the network’s broadcast licenses. The FCC, headed by Trump ally Brendan Carr, went after ABC last year after relentless mocking of Trump by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. The FCC told the network it planned to review eight ABC broadcast licenses at least two years earlier than scheduled, a clear threat to use federal power to prohibit ABC from broadcasting. ABC and Disney are now suing to stop the FCC’s early reviews.
The upshot is that Trump is trying to punish the network for airing content he disapproves of, with ABC fighting for its free speech rights. ABC should win. It will be a gloomy day if it doesn’t.
Facebook parent Meta is facing a landmark lawsuit alleging it deliberately tries to addict kids to content on Facebook and Instagram. Duh? Twenty-nine states, both red and blue, brought the suit, with the trial beginning on August 18. It will last about six weeks. If Meta loses, it might have to pay damages and put new limits on how children interact with its content.
[A Subaru Capitalist takes on the “Subaru Socialists”]
Trump threatened South Korea because it won’t join his military effort to topple the Iranian regime. He said the Pentagon will “substantially reduce” US military participation in what have long been joint US-Korea exercises.
As a reminder, the Korean War is not over. There’s been a ceasefire in place since 1953, so you might think, what’s the big deal. Except North Korea remains an extremely hostile dictatorship, tightly aligned with Russia, that has nuclear weapons it has threated use against the United States. If war breaks out again, it could destroy much of Seoul with artillery launched from thousands of tubes just north of the demilitarized zone.
If you wonder why we should care about South Korea, there’s a simple one-word answer: Semiconductors. South Korea produces roughly 15% of the world’s chips, which are already in short supply. Disrupt that and there’d be an economic earthquake.
Russian drones have been entering European airspace with alarming regularity, and intelligence reports say Russia is building several new drone bases near its border with eastern Europe. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is going badly—but that doesn’t mean he’s backing down. Putin may actually get bolder and more reckless as his Ukraine war deteriorates. He also knows Trump has riven the NATO military alliance. He probably won’t mount attacks on NATO countries, but he may well push provocations right up to the line that warrants some kind of NATO response.
RESULTS MAY VARY 🤷♂️
$4 gas is likely to irritate voters at least through the midterm elections. It now seems like a safe bet that Iran will disrupt Strait of Hormuz shipping till at least then, hoping to punish Trump and his fellow Republicans with election losses tied to war-related inflation. There’s no reason to think Trump can do anything to prevent it. If there’s any good news, it’s that gas prices aren’t heading toward $5. Under current conditions, energy-market workarounds have left prices elevated but not stratospheric.
[How Trump is missing his own economic targets]
People hate Flock surveillance cameras and have been destroying them. Flock makes a suite of surveillance products, powered by artificial intelligence, that can read license plates and gather other data on people’s cars, where they go, and what the occupants do in them. Municipalities have installed 120,000 Flock cameras systems, which alarms civil libertarians and pisses a lot of people off. The Washington Post documented at least 50 instances in which cops used Flock data to harass their exes or conduct other illicit activity. People have vandalized or stolen the devices in Detroit and other cities. There are online videos showing how to dismantle a Flock system. We don’t condone violence but the backlash seems appropriate.
Justice for Tupac? The trial is finally underway in the case involving the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas. Prosecutors charged Duane Davis with the murder in 2023, after the Compton, Los Angeles gang leader bragged about ordering the drive-by shooting in documentaries and a memoir. Davis now says those boasts were a fictional effort to gain notoriety. We don’t have an opinion on whether he’s guilty, but any effort to solve a salacious 30-year-old celebrity murder gets our attention.
SAFELY IGNORE 🚫
Rising interest rates won’t affect most people today, but they signal stress in certain corners of the financial market and a reckoning, at last, for vast amounts of irresponsible government borrowing. Long-term interest rates recently hit the highest level since 2007, forcing a very unusual intervention on the bond market by the Treasury Dept. to bring rates back down. For now, this only affects consumers and businesses in the market for a loan, since they have to pay more. But if rates rise further, which is plausible, it could force stock prices down and generate recessionary pressure.
[The myth of the prosperous worker]
Trump threatened to bomb Oman, another runty overreaction to a nation unwilling to board the sinking ship that is Trump’s Iran strategy. Trump is not going to bomb Oman, because he can’t afford to make his Middle East quagmire even worse. But he’s unhappy that Oman, situated on the south side of the Strait of Hormuz, opposite Iran, is pursuing its own deal with Iran to manage ship traffic through the strait. It’s yet another ugly consequence of the war that Trump and his incompetent Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, failed to anticipate.
Jackson Hole yawner. Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh will give a big speech in Wyoming on August 28, which financial news networks are sure to overhype. There’s a big financial conference in Jackson Hole every August and the Fed chair customarily gives an address. Once or twice, it has moved markets, which is why the media fixates on it. And Warsh, new to the job, still has to prove himself up to the task of getting inflation down.
[The double-haters’ guide to the midterm elections]
But it’s unlikely Warsh will make any actual news. Everybody knows the Fed is split on whether to raise interest rates. That decision won’t come until the Fed’s next policy meeting in mid September. Warsh is more likely to talk about arcane ways he wants to change the way the Fed does business. It might matter for some economists and traders, but not so much for the rest of us.
Harping on Natalie. Trump assistant Natalie Harp is suddenly one of the hottest topics on the internet. Harp is the 35-year-old blond woman who always seems to be by Trump’s side. She reportedly carries a portable printer so she can give Trump hard copies of any news story or social media post he wants to see. Harp was one of the three people who accompanied Trump when he snuck off Air Force One in the catering truck in Turkey on July 8. So Trump must consider her pretty important.
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia said at a recent rally that Trump “doesn’t want to do the job [of President]. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie.” The insinuation was that Trump is having an affair with his aide. In response, Trump called Ossoff “Pee-Wee Herman.” That means Ossoff got under his skin.
We kinda doubt Trump is having an affair with Harp right under the glare of the White House press pool and the rest of the presidential entourage. But he might not mind if people think that. As for his wife Melania, she ought to know better than anybody about Trump’s ability to have a fling at the age of 80. And she hasn’t voiced any concern.
Why would Melaine raise a stink because, she lives high on the hog. Once Trump's bank open's up i bet she gets a raise on spending money.