The Apex of Criminality
- MAC10
- 7 minutes ago
- 4 min read
There is ONE common theme that unites all of the various risks being ignored in markets right now - and that is the obscene and unprecedented level of corruption taking place in broad daylight. There has never been more grift, fraud, scams and rampant lying in our lifetimes than what we are witnessing in the Age of Trump.
But the sheeple ignore all of it, because they are fully onboard with the crime spree, so long as markets keep rising. But when markets roll over and the sheeple realize they got fleeced, then morality will be quickly rediscovered:
"The Lonely Crowd (1950) by David Riesman is a landmark sociological study analyzing the shift in American character, arguing that modern society increasingly relies on peer groups and mass media for guidance rather than traditional concepts of right and wrong"
Where to begin...
Begin with Trump's non-stop championing of highly speculative Crypto currencies that are now embedded in 401k retirement plans:
On May 27th, 2026 Trump declared America the Crypto Capital of the World. As if that is some sort of major accomplishment:
Bitcoin and Crypto currencies have already had major losses, because AI is sucking capital away from every other market.
But Crypto is only the tip of iceberg. In 2026 corruption has accelerated:
"According to an analysis by Reuters, the giant bets were executed in large blocks on four specific days, often 15 to 20 minutes before announcements that triggered double-digit declines in oil prices."
"President Donald Trump’s latest financial disclosures show that he or his investment advisers made more than 3,700 trades in the first quarter, a flurry totaling tens of millions of dollars and involving major companies that have dealings with his administration"
When informed of Trump's insider stock trading, both sides of Congress just shrugged, because they've been doing it non-stop as well. In 2025 House Speaker Johnson argued that Congress needed insider trading to keep up with inflation. A quote that will not age well with time:
All of the Trump criminality-as-usual is getting the majority of attention, mostly from Democrats, however the BIG MONEY grift is taking place wide open on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.
Much of this newfound risk can be viewed as the Casinofication of markets, something Warren Buffett warned about several weeks ago:
In April 2026 FINRA pattern day trading margin requirements put in place after the DotCom crash were removed:
The $25,000 rule was ironically established as a “never again rule” after the dot-com crash"
Another risk deja vu of Y2K are the spate of recent upgrades on parabolic stocks. SanDisk was the top performing stock of 2025 and is the top performing stock in 2026 and yet it was just upgraded at Barclays after a 4,000% run in the past 12 months. Back in Y2K, several analysts became targets of class action lawsuits for upgrading parabolic stocks at the peak of the market. Two of the most famous being Mary Meeker and Henry Blodget. This is all deja vu.
A huge new risk not seen in Y2K are the hundreds of new leveraged ETFs on parabolic stocks and indices. This week in Korea there were a total of 14 new leveraged ETFs added on the two most overbought AI stocks: Samsung and SK Hynix. This additional leverage was added to the top performing global stock market in 2025 AND 2026 in an already frothy market.
"According to the Korea Exchange on May 27th, eight domestic asset management companies listed 16 single-stock ETFs targeting Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. Of these, 14 are leveraged products designed to double the rise in stock prices (2 are inverse ETFs)"
Last but not least are the impending mega IPOs that are now being rushed to market before the bubble implodes deja vu of DotCom junk circa 2000.
Many pundits are claiming that there is no comparison between Y2K and now because ALL of the DotComs were unprofitable with questionable business models. My response is that these impending largest Tech IPOs in history are all unprofitable and have unproven business models, meanwhile each of the big three individually have a market cap that dwarfs all DotComs combined. The amount of impending stock issuance will dwarf anything seen in history.
Therefore the trillion dollar question is, can an already massively overbought Tech market absorb record issuance on a scale that dwarfs Y2K?
"All three companies are yet to generate an annual profit"
“It has yet to be seen how public markets will value OpenAI and its peers once they open up their financial statements to scrutiny and explain the still little-understood economics of their business models”
In summary, we are witnessing the most profoundly corrupt markets in history.
However in a rally no amount of corruption matters, because FOMO is running high and investors all believe they will partake in the gains. However on the way down, morality gets re-discovered, particularly by those who only gauge right and wrong by what other fools are doing.
This AI bubble is now Enron x 100.
However when it explodes, the Lonely Sheeple will be shocked by the level of rampant criminality that was taking place the entire time in broad daylight.
