Tim @TimInBostonMass

@popsicle7631 Yep. another bull trap.

Grok agrees: **Yes, the core facts behind Michael Burry’s allegations are true and verifiable from public disclosures.** argument> This matches the flowchart in the X post (Burry’s Substack analysis from late May 2026 details the full “pipeline”: retiree premiums → Athene US/Bermuda captive → Apollo-directed private credit → VCI debt/equity → GPUs).25 ### Athene’s Portfolio and Risk Details (Also Confirmed) Athene’s public filings and statutory reports show large-scale use of Bermuda captives for reinsurance (less stringent regulation than U.S. rules), significant alternative/private credit investments, and a material portion of assets classified as *ivate credit yields to back annuities.3239 ### Burry’s “Fugazi” Critique vs. the Counter-View - **What Burry alleges is accurate on the facts**: The structure deliberately uses multiple layered entities (SPV, triple-net lease, debt securitization, Bermuda reinsurance) so NVIDIA recognizes revenue immediately, xAI scales compute off-balance-sheet, Apollo earns fees, and ultimate credit/asset risk sits with Athene’s annuity portfolio (and thus indirectly with retirees). Every step is **legal and disclosed** (Apollo’s press release was public in January 2026), but the complexity moves risk away from market pricing and NVIDIA/xAI balance sheets. - **It’s not fraud or hidden**: This is **standard project finance/sale-leaseback/SPV financing**, widely used in aircraft, real estate, and now AI data centers by hyperscalers. It lets companies accelerate capex without ballooning debt. Supporters note xAI pays the lease (covering power, cooling, maintenance), NVIDIA participates in upside via equity, and Apollo/Athene get attractive yields on real assets. Similar structures exist across Big Tech AI builds. - **Burry’s point (his opinion)**: In an AI boom with massive spending, this kind of engineering can obscure downside (e.g., if GPU demand/Grok monetization falters, GPUs depreciate rapidly with new chip generations, and Level 3 valuations become optimistic). He sees it as part of broader “bezzle”/bubble dynamics, consistent with his long-running warnings about NVIDIA, AI capex, and dot-com-like hype. He has been short NVIDIA via puts and has written extensively on this in his Substack. **Bottom line**: Burry’s description of the deal, the flow of money, the off-balance-sheet mechanics, and the involvement of retiree annuity capital via Athene is **factually correct**. The “allegations” boil down to calling this sophisticated (but legal) financial engineering risky and opaque in the context of the AI investment frenzy—not a secret conspiracy or accounting fraud. Markets and regulators are aware of these structures; whether they prove problematic depends on whether xAI (and the broader AI buildout) generates enough returns to service the leases and back the annuities. Burry is betting it won’t (he’s been early/right before, but also early/wrong on timing). Always DYOR—financial filings and Apollo’s announcements are the primary sources.

@VALELORDX @AltcoinDaily This video is from today (Friday May 29th 2026) politico.com/news/2026/05/2…

@robin_j_brooks @biancoresearch @cnbcAsiaTV @CommodMkt Ugh @robin_j_brooks surprised you make such cheap shots. Did your account get hacked?

Bro said... hold my glasses 👓

Trump just made a major concession on the nuclear issue, words that move closer to Iran’s position—good for a deal But the US military just attacked missile sites in Iran — daring the IRCG to respond— bad for a deal. With this chaos, why should Iran believe Trump’s promises?

@stocktalkweekly How much are you hedged right now? Thx

WARNING: “We haven’t had problem in 15 years or more…at some point there will be forced reckoning.” A few weeks ago Fmr @GoldmanSachs Chairman & CEO @LloydBlankfein – a true titan of finance – joined The Master Investor Podcast and shared lessons from his life, including the American Dream, actionable career advice, what makes a great trader & lessons from the 2008 financial crisis with some worrying warnings for today. LESSONS FROM 2008: “If I was still managing the risk of a big institution today I'd be very, very concerned about something that could trigger [a blaze] and I think this is a good time to look for the spark. Could the spark be private equity? Could it be private credit? Could it be the price of oil suddenly doubling? It could be any of those things & the world might absorb that at any other time except we haven't had a problem in 15 years or more. At some point there'll be a forced reckoning.” ART OF GREAT TRADE: “Traders are a lot like good poker players. Over your life, statistically you're going to get the same amount of good hands & bad hands that anybody else will get but somehow the good poker player always wins and the poor poker player always loses. Why is that? One will play the cards better…get out of a bad position quicker and let his opportunity run in a good position. The future is very hard to identify, but I noticed the people who are very good traders are the people who react the quickest to changes.” CAREER ADVICE: “In order to do a good job, you need the enthusiastic support of the people who are your subordinates. I didn't always make myself so friendly to the people around me. If I'd known I was going to grow so senior in the firm, I would've been a lot nicer to people on the way up because then I would've had to spend much less of my time apologising to them. Once I got to those positions, I needed their support as I moved up the letterhead.” Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 2:49 The advantage of low expectations 5:10 Feeling insignificant 6:52 The American Dream 8:15 J. Aron vs Goldman Sachs 11:16 The art of being a great trader 13:21 Traders vs Investment Bankers 16:25 Memories of 2008 Financial Crisis 20:28 “You can’t recover from being dead” 22:26 Déjà vu today from 2008? 26:13 A reckoning is coming 28:28 US government debt risks 30:00 US economy has strong culture 34:10 London as a financial centre 36:22 I started life as a gold trader but it didn’t make me a gold bug 37:52 I am mostly in equities 39:10 You need support of subordinates not grudging cooperation 42:45 Suck it up and stick it out 45:27 Don’t get deluded by your own self importance 47:53 Worrier not a warrior 51:55 Optimism is generally justified

@FirstSquawk Is someone going to tell him?

@zerowontmiss Yes. He was outstanding. Amazingly talented.

Meta is laying off 8,000 people tomorrow, or 10% of the company. Just 3 days before Memorial Day weekend. They told everyone to work from home on Wednesday so they can fire them remotely. This is probably to make it easier for the executive team to let them go than it is to give the effected employees some grace. Then another 7,000 employees are being "drafted" into AI teams. What are those teams building? AI agents that will be trained to replace the employees building it. They're also eliminating middle managers which will make them "flatter" so they can have smaller teams that move faster. And they installed mouse tracking software on employee machines so they can watch literally everything you do (more companies do this already than you realize). This is going to be the new blueprint. We all know tech is a copy cat league. Every major tech company is watching this play out and will follow suite.

YARDENI: “.. we expect the FOMC to signal a tightening bias at the June meeting of the monetary policy-setting committee, followed by a 25bps FFR hike at the July meeting. We can't rule out more rate hikes over the rest of this year.” @yardeni

Imagine a rogue terrorist cell from Pennsylvania’s Amish community commits an October 7-style atrocity in Philadelphia—mass murder, rape, and kidnapping. No one would dispute the right to hunt those perpetrators down. But what if the response is to carpet-bomb every Amish town, farm, and settlement? Tens of thousands of Amish civilians are killed. Schools, churches, and hospitals are flattened. The entire population is displaced into famine and rubble, all justified by the official line: "We had to get the terrorists—they were hiding among them." Would anyone call that justified self-defense? Or would it be universally condemned as a horrific war crime that punishes a whole people for the sins of a few? Outrage wouldn't be a "moral inversion"—it would be the only sane reaction to watching a community be annihilated. That is Gaza, stripped of geopolitical abstraction. Condemning this devastation doesn't excuse Hamas or ignore the hostages. It simply refuses to accept the near-total erasure of a civilian population as acceptable collateral damage. If the Amish scenario demands universal condemnation, applying a completely different standard to Gaza is the actual moral inversion. Empathy for the dead and displaced isn't a "false belief." Pretending the body count and the rubble don't matter is.

@Zilya001 @wolfejosh Islamism and Islam are not the same thing. You know that, right?

Sorry, but this is absolutely INSANE. I’ve seen a few of these now. Share this and raise more awareness. Someone needs to help these people.

🧳 Xi’s long handshake with Stephen Miller? Pure Chinese subtlety >>> A quiet show of force. A diplomatic “fuck you.” In the Beijing receiving line, President Xi deliberately paused longest with Trump’s attack-dog Deputy Chief of Staff. Eye contact locked. Smile gone. Grip held firm. While Trump watched, Xi was sending a message the old-school Chinese way: I know exactly who you are. And Miller’s past comments on social media > makes it crystal clear why: • “The days of China pillaging America are over.”
(Miller’s chest-thumping classic) • “Saving the West from complete economic domination by another power [China].”
(His Fox News grandstanding) • Accusing China of “decades of intellectual property theft, industrial espionage, currency manipulation, targeted dumping” >>> all to justify US tariffs, visa bans, and economic bullying. • Bragging that restrictions will “deliver a significant setback to China’s long term industrial plans.” Xi wasn’t impressed. He was staring down the architect of America’s confrontational playbook… and letting him feel the weight. No shouting. No drama. Just calculated, ice-cold poise >> the Chinese way of saying: your threats don’t scare us. A subtle power move. America brings the bark. China brings the patience.

这次美国访华晚宴坐在马斯克和库克中间C位最亮眼的，是蓝思科技创始人周群飞，从农村打工妹到中国女首富，完全没有任何背景全靠自己白手起家。她出生在湖南的一个小村庄，5岁时母亲去世，父亲也因工伤残疾双目失明，家徒四壁，16岁交不起学费被迫辍学去广东打工，在一家工厂流水线打磨玻璃，白天干活，晚上疯狂自学，考了会计证、电脑操作证等技能证书，就这样过了几年，她拿着靠打工攒的2万块，拉上哥哥姐姐、嫂子姐夫等8个亲戚，在深圳开了一家小作坊，做手表玻璃加工，她一个人修机器、跑销售，就这样又干了4年。 到了2000年后手机行业开始大规模发展，一次偶然的机会她的手表玻璃厂接到了TCL手机屏幕的订单，她看到了手机玻璃市场的巨大潜力，于是迅速成立了蓝思科技，专门负责手机玻璃的生产研发和销售，一开始只做国产手机和山寨机，但是直到有一次想谈下摩托罗拉的订单，但外企的质量要求非常严格，她赌上几乎全部的资源配合摩托罗拉，拿下了全球销售超过1亿台的V3订单，直接把蓝思科技推到了行业领先位置，随后顺利拿下诺基亚、三星等外企。 关键的转折点又一次出现在了2007年，当时乔布斯发布初代iPhone，彻底把手机往全玻璃触屏的方向变革，乔布斯那变态的工艺要求全球都找不到符合的厂商，周群飞敏锐的意识到这又是一个巨大的机会，于是带领团队和苹果工程师联合攻关了3个月，突破关键工艺，成功量产了第一代iPhone玻璃面板，从此拿下苹果长期合同，后续的iPad、MacBook等几乎所有苹果设备全部都交给了蓝思科技，也帮助蓝思科技在触摸玻璃面板领域成为全区最大公司。 这也是为什么她能坐在库克旁边，那为什么马斯克也坐在她旁边呢？ 蓝思科技在玻璃面板干到全球第一后，开始往更加多元的智能化设备发展，包括汽车座舱和机器人，其中汽车领域包括车窗、中控等已经拿下了特斯拉、宝马、奔驰、理想等30家车企，机器人领域则主要负责关节、传感器等部件，这些都和马斯克的业务有深度重合。 一个15岁辍学只有初中文凭的女生，从湖南农村出来白手起家成为中国女首富，40年后进入中美会谈，坐在了马斯克和库和中间，这就是周群飞的故事。

BREAKING: The new Fed Chair just signaled a major shift. Kevin Warsh says QE is fueling inflation. The Fed's massive balance sheet is part of the problem. "The Fed should exit markets outside of crises." This is not Powell talking. This is a completely different philosophy. Powell printed. Warsh wants to stop. Powell expanded the balance sheet. Warsh wants to shrink it. $6,700,000,000,000 in Fed assets. Warsh just told you that number needs to come down. - Less liquidity. - Higher rates for longer. - Risk assets reprice. The market has been betting on easy money. The new Fed Chair just bet against it. Everything changes on today.

@ThePowerAudit It’s a warning.

Did you hear President Xi warning Trump about falling into the “Thucydides Trap”? Let me explain. China is negotiating from a position of absolute strength— and for once, Trump is facing a rival power that refuses to bend on tariffs, sanctions, Iran, or Taiwan. Xi’s message is clear: the era of uncontested American dominance is ending — and the US cannot afford a direct confrontation with Beijing over Taiwan.