United's CEO says he won't buy JetBlue. I think he'll buy the best parts of it anyway. Scott Kirby's words: "The last thing I'm going to do is buy a route network that loses money." To make it work, he said, United would have to improve JetBlue's margin by 25 points, which "seems mathematically close to impossible." Asked again on last week's earnings call, he said he'd done enough talking this year about the "c word." But JetBlue is now worth $990 million, its loyalty bonds trade under 50 cents on the dollar, and United already has a foot in the door. Their Blue Sky partnership lets members earn miles on both, and United gets up to 7 daily round trips from JetBlue's new JFK terminal as early as 2027. What United would really want is JFK. It left in 2022 after failing to get enough slots. JetBlue holds 337 of JFK's 1,497. Together they'd have 26%, still behind Delta's 29%. The problem is everywhere else. Together they'd be #1 in Boston with 34% of seats and have 35% of Fort Lauderdale. Judges blocked JetBlue's alliance with American in 2023 and its Spirit deal in 2024. So the more likely path is a bankruptcy sale, airline by the piece. American bought TWA's assets out of bankruptcy in 2001 for about $742 million, and regulators let it through. This year Spirit's slots, gates, and planes went to different buyers. The catch is TrueBlue. The loyalty program and its credit card deals are pledged to $2.7 billion of debt, and those lenders just hired advisers. Whoever wants TrueBlue deals with them first. So United never buys all of JetBlue. If JetBlue files, United goes after the JFK slots, maybe Boston, and the newer A321neos, maybe even the A220s. Blue Sky gives it the inside track, though Delta or American could get in the mix. The TrueBlue lenders end up owning what's left.

Imagine the Supreme Court stopping the count after polls close and ordering polls reopen for two hours ONLY in Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Atlanta, and you sort of get the scope of what's currently happening in Brazil.

Howe's men move into the attack for the 250th anniversary of White Plains.

Another proof? Look at South America. It's the live experiment, running right now in front of us. For two decades, the continent was the showroom of 21st-century socialism. Chávez, Maduro, Morales, Correa, Kirchner, Petro. Endless promises, endless crises, endless enemies to blame. Then voters turned. Argentina elected Milei, who inherited 211% inflation and brought it down to around 34%. Bolivia ended nearly twenty years of socialist MAS rule. Chile elected José Antonio Kast with 58% of the vote. Ecuador kept Noboa. Peru moved right. And Colombia, after four years of Gustavo Petro, elected Abelardo de la Espriella. Look closely at Colombia, because it's the clearest case. Petro's flagship policy was "Total Peace": negotiating with guerrillas and narco organizations, treating armed groups as political partners. De la Espriella did the opposite. Within weeks he ordered a "total offensive" against the ELN guerrilla and the FARC dissidents and ruled out any negotiation with what he calls narco-terrorism. Daily arrests. Strikes against the Clan del Golfo, the country's largest cartel. Same country, same army, same cartels. Different will. That's the question that should keep you up at night. If crime can be confronted the moment someone actually decides to confront it, why wasn't it? My answer: because the problem was the business model. A left that solves problems makes itself unnecessary. Its entire apparatus, the parties, the unions, the NGOs, the consultants, the international conferences, the careers built on "managing" poverty, violence and inequality, lives off the problem continuing. Solve crime and you lose the fear that justifies your programs. Solve inflation and you lose the state that controls prices. Solve poverty and you lose your clients. I'm not saying they plotted it in a back room. I'm saying every incentive points the same way, and people follow incentives. A movement that lives off chaos will never be in a hurry to end it. Its status, its funding, its standard of living depend on the problem never going away. And that's what is collapsing today. Across South America, voters looked at decades of problems that were "managed" but never solved, and they fired the managers. Brazil is the last big piece. If it follows, the five largest economies on the continent will all be governed from the right. The lesson for the rest of us, for Americans voting in a few days, for Europeans watching their countries drift: a problem that is never solved is not always a failure. Sometimes it's the product. Free people solve problems because they have something to lose when problems persist. Collectivists manage problems because they have something to lose when problems end.

FT comments never miss. I don’t think I’ve read such a rational analysis of the situation we’re in for a long time.

And they burned the ladder behind them.

Everyone planning to sail solo asks a million questions about sleep schedules, catnaps, and keeping a proper lookout. Then you reach a certain age and apparently just say, “F it. I’ve had a good life.” And sleep for 11 straight hours. 💀

The USAID money stolen from taxpayers to fund leftwing elections all over the world, has disappeared. And suddenly, leftwing parties all over the world are losing elections in historical fashion. What a coincidence.

Chamath reveals a major US bank cut AWS and Google Cloud spending and built six independent data centers, because companies increasingly want control over their own data “I see that at 8090 as well. I think the large companies that we work with, you can almost pinpoint it on a chart. Ever since Alex Karp’s commentary on CNBC about data sovereignty, buying patterns have changed. And I think people are being a lot more methodical. “They are building out their own data centers, or at least moving into VPCs, virtual public clouds. My team yesterday was at the CIO event of, let’s say, one of the largest banks in America. “You know what they said? I’m not going to say the name of the bank. It was the most incredible thing. They said, ‘We have decreased our spend on AWS and GCP. We now have six completely independent ground-up data centers that we’ve built from scratch for ourselves.’ “And I was like, ‘What is going on here?’”

Whenever I feel lost, I watch this.