NEW: The average Bitcoin ETF Holder is back above water for the first time since January. The rally this morning has bitcoin:native above our estimated ETF cost basis of $81,722 per coin. h/t @EricBalchunas

Warsh Should Have Exposed the Fed! If President Trump’s account is accurate, Kevin Warsh missed a defining opportunity. The Federal Reserve did not merely raise rates. It demonstrated how far America’s central bank has drifted from a transparent, data-driven institution toward a political actor insulated from democratic scrutiny. Trump says he discussed the chairman’s planned vote with Warsh beforehand. Warsh’s reported response was telling: he might as well vote with the Board because “it’s not going to matter.” That is not how a central bank committed to evidence and accountability should operate. It is how a closed political institution operates when dissent is treated as irrelevant. Warsh should have dissented. More importantly, he should have gone public with a clear explanation: what did the inflation data show, what did employment and growth data show, and why did the Fed nevertheless choose tighter policy? If the Fed’s decision was defensible, the case should withstand public scrutiny. If it was not, Americans deserved to know. Instead, the public is left with the unmistakable impression that the Fed’s leaders are less concerned with following the evidence than with resisting Donald Trump. The institution that controls the price of money cannot demand independence while behaving like another partisan power center. A public dissent from Warsh would have forced the issue. It would have shown whether the Fed was guided by theory and data—or by a political desire to deny Trump an economic victory.

BREAKING: For the first time since the Iran war began, JPMorgan says it no longer has a baseline view on oil, writing "we simply don't know how to model the endgame," and that the assumption that the Middle East disruptions are temporary is "becoming increasingly difficult to sustain," per JPMorgan Global Research. The bank says it had assumed there were economic red lines the Trump administration would be unwilling to cross, and that six months later "many of those lines have been crossed, yet the exit strategy is less clear, not more." Chevron's CEO said this week the Great fuel crisis has officially arrived, as Trump officials continue to claim the disruption temporary.

1/5 I have the opposite conclusion. Fed cutting has been a two-year policy error that (hopefully) ends tomorrow with a hike (91% prob now). This chart shows that since the Fed started cutting rates on Sept. 18, 2024, the 10-year yield is UP 1.30% @AnnaEconomist @fundstrat

*FED UNANIMOUSLY RAISES BENCHMARK RATE 25 BPS TO 3.75%-4% RANGE So all the discussion in the table below was a waste of time. Half the voters did not follow through on what they said in the last few weeks. We are still at Warsh will decide, and everyone else can be ignored. And Trump can now go HARD after Warsh to get the policy he wants.