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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PAY ATTENTION ⚠️
Iran war bluff? Unnamed government officials told several major media outlets that the US and Israel are preparing joint attacks on Iran after the midterm elections. We think Trump is deliberately leaking and using the media to bluff. Iran has demonstrated the capability to significantly damage US bases and Persian Gulf energy infrastructure. US vulnerabilities are deepening as the US military runs short of drone and missile interceptors, which take a long time to replace. Meanwhile, more oil is flowing out of the Gulf than before the war began—which we predicted more than a month ago. But the risk of tankers coming under Iranian attack has sharply raised costs. So we may be approaching a new normal where there’s enough oil in global markets, but it just costs more.
Blue wave odds are peaking at the worst possible time for Trump and his fellow Republicans. Kalshi’s odds of a Democratic sweep have hit 67%, the highest all year. In mid-September they were less than 50%. That’s happening because Trump’s poor approval rating is getting even worse. His net approval rating in the Real Clear Politics composite is now -22, which is the lowest presidential approval for a president in the month before the midterm elections since Harry Truman in 1946.
[7 things to watch after Election Day]
We think polls and prediction markets are overstating the Democrats’ odds of retaking the Senate, and we remind everybody that midterm polling is especially sketchy. But many former Trump voters are clearly abandoning him. Pollster G. Elliot Morris even thinks some 2024 Trump voters responding to this year’s polls are lying about voting for him in the last presidential race, out of embarrassment or anger.
Elon Musk apparently wants Ukraine to lose the war Russia started when it invaded in 2022. Musk reportedly ordered his company SpaceX to slow the military-grade Starlink Internet service Ukraine relies on to attack many Russian targets and shoot down incoming missiles and drones. SpaceX provides the service to Ukraine via the Defense Dept., which pays for it. Panicky Ukrainian officials say the slowdown is getting people killed and threatening Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.
This is a weird and outrageous situation that wouldn’t happen in any other administration. SpaceX is a defense contractor, and the CEOs of defense contractors don’t get to decide whether the Pentagon can use their equipment or not. It’s possible Trump told Musk to throttle the service, to punish Ukraine for one of his many perceived grievances. Whatever the case, something is deeply wrong when a single multibillionaire gets to decide how the United States supports military allies, or kneecaps them.
Vladimir Putin seems to have snookered Trump again. The two men made a deal in which Putin gets new energy revenue to help finance the Ukraine war while giving Trump … nothing in return. Trump is in the process of easing sanctions on Russia, in violation of a law Congress just passed meant to do the opposite. He proposed talks with Putin and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping about how to end the Iran war, with no Ukrainians present. Putin could have hardly asked for more than a US president willing to overlook the genocides and gang-rapes he has orchestrated while normalizing relations just because his country has oil.
MIGHT GET SPICY 🤔
A Trump pardon can cost as much as $50 million. That’s what a Venezuelan billionaire was willing to pay Trump lawyer Alina Habba as part of a sweetheart job offer that would be off the charts for any person not tied to Trump. It worked! A few weeks after Habba started her sinecure, Trump pardoned the billionaire, Julio Herrera Velutini. We wonder what Trump’s take is when he sells a pardon via syndicators.
[Trump is getting the worst ratings of is life]
The latest Republican dirty trick is a house-to-house search for noncitizen voters in California and several other states by armed immigration agents. There are basically no noncitizen voters, because nobody goes to the trouble of sneaking into America just to vote for Democrats. Most migrants come here to work and earn money under the table, and are unlikely to risk that by registering to vote and calling attention to themselves. Duh. So maybe this boneheaded effort will tie up a bunch of government goons in pointless activities. But the mere fact that Trump would okay such a search tells you he’s got plans to deploy federal agents in nefarious ways during the election.
Did AI do us a solid? OpenAI’s agents found a dangerous security loophole in software integral to thousands of web sites around the world, which allowed programmers to devise security patches before hackers could exploit the gaps. We think. Most of us just look on from the sidelines, puzzled, when the Internet stewards signal an SOS. And usually it works out with little harm to anybody. We put this under Might Get Spicy, though, because one of these days something a lot more serious could happen.
[The AI bubble isn’t bursting]
France is in a state of chaos, but we’ve got enough trouble here, so here’s the short version: French students and some teachers have been rioting to protest lousy conditions at schools, part of a larger rebellion against efforts to rein in a generous social welfare system France can no longer afford. This is a real governmental crisis, with yields on French bonds spiking as investors start to worry that France may not be able to pay its debts. Something similar could happen here in a few years.
RESULTS MAY VARY 🤷♂️
Diesel prices haven’t budged since Trump tried to lower them by announcing the dirty diesel deal with Putin a few days back. And oil prices have been spiking, which means fuel prices will likely rise, too, as Election Day approaches. Gas prices peaked at higher levels during Joe Biden’s presidency, but by the time of the midterms in 2022, they had fallen to around $3.90 per gallon. Trump’s midterm gas price will likely exceed Biden’s by about 40 cents.
Are you obsessed with Elizabeth Holmes? A surprising number of people seem to be, judging by the surprise success of a new film about the Theranos founder convicted of fraud in 2022 for peddling bogus blood-testing technology. The documentary, “You Can See Everything,” is a come-from-nowhere hit smashing box-office records in its category, despite hardly any advertising. Have you seen it? Tell us what the hook is.
Defense Dept. officials are eager to testify against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth once impeachment procedures commence in the House of Representatives after the midterm elections. That’s according to The Telegraph. If impeachment goes nowhere during the lame-duck session at the end of the year, Democrats seem eager to pick it up if they take control of the House starting with next year’s session.
Facebook parent Meta must pay $25 billion to the state of New Mexico after it lost a lawsuit over abuse of users’ privacy. The suit stems from the sale of data to Cambridge Analytica all the way back in 2016. The British firm used Facebook users’ data to personalize political ads during the 2016 US election. A firestorm erupted in 2018 when those practices became public. The $25 billion penalty is one of the biggest fines in corporate history, but don’t cry for Meta. Its stock has outperformed the red-hot Nasdaq during the last three years and its estimated profit for the current year is $78 billion, according to S&P Capital IQ. Our data has turned out to be great business for Facebook.
SAFELY IGNORE 🚫
Israel holds national elections on October 27 and many critics hope voters will send Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu packing. It will be the first major election since the brutal Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023. We rank this as Safely Ignore because elections in other countries don’t affect Americans very much. We realize some people have strong opinions. We only wish they’d get as fired up about fixing America as they do about reforming the Middle East.
An Elon Musk megacompany could result if Tesla and SpaceX merge, as seems increasingly likely. Tesla’s market value is nearly $1.5 trillion. SpaceX is worth nearly $2 trillion. But a combined entity would be worth less than the sum of the parts because of redundancies and overlap. An analyst at British research firm Oxcap Analytics said the merged behemoth would be “a sprawling conglomerate that could trade at a discount rather than a premium.” We just hope it will be able to fulfill Musk’s dream and transport him to Mars.
Vivek Ramaswamy produced the worst political ad of 2026. He’s running as a Republican to be governor of Ohio, against Democrat Amy Acton. The Ramaswamy video, circulated online, features Acton’s own mom urging Ohioans not to vote for her daughter, because “she’s a liar.” Wow! That’s some gotcha venom!
Except Amy Acton has been estranged from her mother for years, because her stepfather—the mother’s husband—sexually abused her as a child. Acton’s brother defended her and backed up her story. So Ramaswamy recruited a woman who abetted the sexual abuse of her own daughter to criticize the victim of sexual abuse. Fit to be Ohio’s governor? Ramaswamy seems to have made the case against himself.
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France is in more trouble than the U.S. because it relies much more on “physiocratic” economics (monopolies and tariffs) than the U.S. (pre-Trump).
Whether they understand or just follow trends, investors sense that it is easier for the U.S. to avoid the trap that snared Nicholas II of Russia than France. We have the 16th Amdt which allows Congress to tax
“Incomes, from whatever source derived.”
By the mandates of double-entry accounting, ALL “wealth” is “derived” from “incomes” (current or accumulated net worth). Therefore all US wealth necessarily supports US debt.
Thus, while our Nero-esque leaders fiddle away, though it will be painful, the U.S. “can” fix its mess very quickly.