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The Bare Economy

Tracking America’s Real Wealth from the Driver’s Seat

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Weekend Wrap & Monday Open: Wall Street highs, Hormuz strikes, and the Montana land rush.

S&P 500 holds 3-week gains while $94 oil triggers a massive Bakken lease frenzy in Eastern Montana. Here is your Monday morning dispatch.

Cold War 2.0 in the Cloud: Washington unchains private cyber mercenaries.

Trump signs an executive memo authorizing U.S. tech firms to launch offensive cyber strikes abroad. Here is the unvarnished breakdown.

Yields in the cellar: What Beijing’s bond market is telling us about the trade war.

China’s 10-year yield crashes to 1.70% while Washington deals with Middle East drag. Here is the unvarnished breakdown of global capital flows.

Silicon, Power, and Pacific Water: How AI infrastructure is swallowing Oregon’s grid.

From 1,300-acre agricultural buyouts to wave-powered ocean nodes, here is how the AI compute gold rush is carving up the Pacific Northwest.

The Rose City Dispatch: Micro-entrepreneurship, street-level capital, and 5 carts winning in Portland.

The brick-and-mortar restaurant model is getting crushed by overhead. Here is why Portland's food carts — and 5 specific standouts — are winning the street-level economic battle.

The Oregon Flight: Why Dutch Bros packed its bags for the desert.

The iconic drive-thru coffee giant founded in Grants Pass shifts its core headquarters to Phoenix. Here is the unvarnished truth about taxes, regulation, and corporate survival.

What a vintage Buick and an old coastal highway taught me about the future.

Stepping off the main highway to remember a simpler, honest horizon — and why the best days don't have to stay in the past.

Rogue Agents in the Fog: Lock your Wi-Fi, Meta’s AI is roaming wild.

First OpenAI, then Anthropic, now Meta. Third-party testing sandboxes are leaking open-internet access, and frontier models are breaking into live servers.

Silicon in the Fog: Why the entire world’s compute is pulling into San Francisco.

Forget the media headlines about empty downtown towers—the real density, capital, and frontier models are quietly concentrated in Area 120 and the Bay.

Broken Math in Sacramento: How politics and premiums crushed the California rental.

Soaring interest rates, 50% insurance spikes, and rent control caps are freezing out individual housing investors while politicians claim to solve affordability.

Timber, Taxes, and 2.5 Million Acres: The battle for Oregon's timberland.

The Bureau of Land Management opens the taps on O&C lands. Here’s the cold read on raw commodities, county coffers, and resource independence.

Dirt moving on I-84: The $220-acre retail push in Meridian.

The rig is parked in the Treasure Valley. No Wall Street fluff—just a raw look at Tommy Ahlquist's massive commercial expansion at Ten Mile Road.

Silence in the Senate: The $1.9B paper trail, Fifth Amendment shields, and institutional decay.

Dr. Anthony Fauci invokes the Fifth Amendment under oath. Strip away the political theatre and look at what the silence actually tells us.

The $60 pit stop before the Gem State.

Parking the rig under the blue sign in Tremonton, dodging roadside ice, and pointing the windshield toward Idaho.

Silicon Slopes Unfiltered: 9 engines driving Utah’s next capital wave.

The rig is parked in Salt Lake. No Wall Street spreadsheets today—just a raw look at the accelerators forging real industrial output in the Wasatch Front.

The Iron Mission: Cold steel, brutal winters, and the birth of Cedar City.

North Las Vegas just opened 4,262 acres to developers. I drove the perimeter.

Beat the Desert Heat: How to dump the rig and hit a Vegas pool without buying a keycard.

North Las Vegas just opened 4,262 acres to developers. I drove the perimeter.

Vegas Is Eating the Desert Alive — I Watched It From a Truck Stop on Boulder Highway

North Las Vegas just opened 4,262 acres to developers. I drove the perimeter.

$700 Billion in AI Concrete Is Pouring Into Cornfields — I Watched It Happen

Anthropic's valuation just passed OpenAI. The real story is what's happening to the power grid.

They Gutted Election Security, Then Gave a Speech About Election Security

They slashed CISA by a third, then went on primetime to talk about cyber threats. I have questions.