...are not suprised at the spike in Vol.
Still has some time before weak hands get forced out.
Friday, March 06, 2026
Thursday, February 26, 2026
"Why take a chance?" - Cleaning House in the Middle Kingdom
There is a scene in the movie "Casino" that ushers in an incredibly violent motage that focuses on "cleaning house" (eliminating anyone who could testify or cooperate with law enforcement, aka "rats")
Life imitating art. Who knows how many are compromised and Xi Jinping must be uttering "why take a chance" under his breath...
By Foster Wong and Josh Xiao
(Bloomberg) -- China removed nine military lawmakers from
its national parliament in the latest sign that President Xi
Jinping’s purge of key defense establishment personnel continues
to widen.
The country’s top legislative body revoked the membership
of Ground Force Commander Li Qiaoming and Information Support
Force Political Commissar Li Wei, along with seven other
military officials, during their two-day meeting this week,
state-run Xinhua News Agency reported on Thursday citing a
notice from the National People’s Congress Standing Committee.
The dismissals from the 14th National People’s Congress
include Ground Force’s Ding Laifu; Central Military Commission’s
Bian Ruifeng and Wang Donghai; Navy’s Shen Jinlong and Qin
Shengxiang; Air Force’s Yu Zhongfu; and Rocket Force’s Yang
Guang, according to the report, which didn’t provide reasons for
the removals.
Thursday, February 05, 2026
Monday, January 26, 2026
Volatility...
The Recapitulator believes the Ides of March will herald the return of volatilty, which is looking rather cheap in that context...
Monday, January 19, 2026
Monday, January 12, 2026
Minnesota Fraud and Trust/Non-Trust societies
TLDR: Justice moves arithmetically and retrospectively. fraud moves exponentially and contemporaneously. This is a problem for the United States.
The Recapitulator resides a town over from downtown Minneapolis, which is suffering from all sorts of issues at the moment but I will discuss "Justice" a bit here.
One of the challenges with Western Society importing immigrants is the issue of a low-trust vs. high- trust design for the prevailing Justice System.
The West is culturally a high-trust Justice System design. This is based on cultural values which assume "honesty" in the community as a whole and dishonesty as relative outliers. Because this is the assumption many safeguards and guardrails are built into the investigatorey and prosecutorial arms of the government. These act as checks against government power.
This system also relies upon rights, responsibilities, of citizens and controls upon authorities to limit power and enforcement. There is a presumption of innocence. Social enforcement of dishonesty is also purvasive. If one is known as "dishonest" in this space, one's opportunities are truncated and one risks being a pariah.
Conversely, low-trust justice systems assume transactions are arms length, fraud and deception are part of the game, and participants should dispense with long-term social punishments.
Minneapolis in particular serves as a particularly good laboratory for what happens when low-trust communities are imported into a high-trust Justice system designed on cultural norms based on honesty.
Justice moves arithmetically...and fraud (including political fraud and collusion) moves exponentially
Given the resource drain that investigations, prosecutions, and convictions demand, scaling up fraudulent operations acts as instant insulation from future enforcement. The process of gathering evidence, prosecuting, etc., etc. makes the US Justice system powerless to combat low-trust populations for the most part if efforts are coordinated and allowed to scale. A first-mover advantage.
For example, the largest RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) case in US History, US vs. MS-13, the number of defendants topped a whopping 73 people. From indictment to sentencing took approximately 8 years.
The possible Defendants of the Fraud in Minnesota could number 2-3 orders of magnitude greater than this, putting immense pressure on a high-trust Justice System designed to limit Governmental power, which of course is not accidental.
All of this puts pressure on a Justice System based on high-trust cultural values. And therein lies problems, with future "solutions" that would be terrifying if they were not already in motion.
We are hurtling towards near-omniscience with AI driven surveillance systems. A possible sollution to the inherant scaleability problem above would be to eliminate some of the safeguards associated with a high-trust Justice system in the name of expedience.
The ramifications on culture are obvious. And its interesting to note the experiment of expecting instutions fo change cultures by moving populations from low-trust to high-trust locales has failed. And yet, the solution may harken a different, perhaps even more complicated and dark moment for "Justice".
I can hear the "solution" now...
"Have some issues with exponentially expanding fraud in light of an arithmetically limited Justice system? Sure we can build an app for that! But it will not involve the Courts...or Congress. All we have to do is remove the guardrails. We can always replace them if it does not work right?"
The Recapitulator resides a town over from downtown Minneapolis, which is suffering from all sorts of issues at the moment but I will discuss "Justice" a bit here.
One of the challenges with Western Society importing immigrants is the issue of a low-trust vs. high- trust design for the prevailing Justice System.
The West is culturally a high-trust Justice System design. This is based on cultural values which assume "honesty" in the community as a whole and dishonesty as relative outliers. Because this is the assumption many safeguards and guardrails are built into the investigatorey and prosecutorial arms of the government. These act as checks against government power.
This system also relies upon rights, responsibilities, of citizens and controls upon authorities to limit power and enforcement. There is a presumption of innocence. Social enforcement of dishonesty is also purvasive. If one is known as "dishonest" in this space, one's opportunities are truncated and one risks being a pariah.
Conversely, low-trust justice systems assume transactions are arms length, fraud and deception are part of the game, and participants should dispense with long-term social punishments.
Minneapolis in particular serves as a particularly good laboratory for what happens when low-trust communities are imported into a high-trust Justice system designed on cultural norms based on honesty.
Justice moves arithmetically...and fraud (including political fraud and collusion) moves exponentially
Given the resource drain that investigations, prosecutions, and convictions demand, scaling up fraudulent operations acts as instant insulation from future enforcement. The process of gathering evidence, prosecuting, etc., etc. makes the US Justice system powerless to combat low-trust populations for the most part if efforts are coordinated and allowed to scale. A first-mover advantage.
For example, the largest RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) case in US History, US vs. MS-13, the number of defendants topped a whopping 73 people. From indictment to sentencing took approximately 8 years.
The possible Defendants of the Fraud in Minnesota could number 2-3 orders of magnitude greater than this, putting immense pressure on a high-trust Justice System designed to limit Governmental power, which of course is not accidental.
All of this puts pressure on a Justice System based on high-trust cultural values. And therein lies problems, with future "solutions" that would be terrifying if they were not already in motion.
We are hurtling towards near-omniscience with AI driven surveillance systems. A possible sollution to the inherant scaleability problem above would be to eliminate some of the safeguards associated with a high-trust Justice system in the name of expedience.
The ramifications on culture are obvious. And its interesting to note the experiment of expecting instutions fo change cultures by moving populations from low-trust to high-trust locales has failed. And yet, the solution may harken a different, perhaps even more complicated and dark moment for "Justice".
I can hear the "solution" now...
"Have some issues with exponentially expanding fraud in light of an arithmetically limited Justice system? Sure we can build an app for that! But it will not involve the Courts...or Congress. All we have to do is remove the guardrails. We can always replace them if it does not work right?"
Wednesday, January 07, 2026
Boots on the ground Economic perspective in Venezuela...
As a preface, all the VZ friends of The Recapitulaltor have applauded the US action. Again, dear readers, its not like the Monroe Doctrine was not invoked before...by Democratic Presidents...
So this snippet is a microcosm. On a more amusing note and as a person living in Minnesota, it does seem a strange confluence of things leading back to here (Walz, fraud, etc. Cargill is headquartered here)
https://x.com/agrisacademy/sta
Cargill was/is the leading producer of critical staple ingredients such as flour, pasta, vegetable oil, and rice in VZ. I am not saying I agree with grabbing the dictator, but I did have a front row seat to the damage a kleptocracy did to innocent people.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)