🚦Signal & Noise

From Lysander to LARPing: 2,400 Years of Misreading the Moment. (Because bad takes are eternal, whether in sandals or CNBC segments.)

Apr 25, 2025

For the week ending April 25, 2025

Note: Welcome back, brilliant masochists, to another edition of 🚦Signal & Noise— your favorite unpaid therapy session masquerading as a newsletter.

First off, a heartfelt thank you to everyone who reads, shares, and sends me comments ranging from "brilliant" to "are you okay?" Every note you send is a reminder that this strange little act of love—publicly ranting into the void—actually lands somewhere. Your encouragement keeps me going, and your sarcasm keeps me honest.

So thank you. Really. Without you, I'd just be yelling about Harry Dent alone in a Panera.

This Week’s Cauldron of Chaos Includes:

Sparta Drops the Mic on Athens: Democracy gets a heel turn, and brunch is ruined for centuries.
Economic LARPing: Why screaming about an imminent bank run is just cosplay for grown men who think buying Dinar is "investing."
Harry Dent, the TEMU version of Jim Cramer: A financial Nostradamus... if Nostradamus were wrong 98% of the time and had a punchable Etsy shop.

Think of it as group therapy with existential dread about monetary policy.

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ON THIS DAY: On This Day: Sparta Drops the Original Mic on Athens (404 BC)

Alright, let’s take a detour from whatever LinkedIn guru is currently screaming about "unlocking synergies" via a 90-second video filmed in their Audi. Today’s Signal & Noise strolls all the way back to 404 BC. Yes, that’s right, we’re heading to the ancient Greek drama that didn’t involve overpriced amphora NFTs or a Peloton subscription—The Peloponnesian War.

So there it was: Athens, the intellectual Kardashian of ancient city-states—full of swagger, philosophers, and a disturbingly high ratio of sandals to soldiers—finally got ghosted by destiny. Sparta, a city whose entire aesthetic was CrossFit meets personality disorder, rolled in and said, “That’s enough democracy for one millennium.”

Lysander, Sparta’s version of a middle manager with delusions of Caesar, shows up, defeats the Athenians, and ends the war. The very long, very dramatic war. We’re talking 27 years of petty island-hopping and spear-chucking, punctuated by philosophical whining and the world's first known subtweet: "The unexamined life is not worth living."

Athens lost. Not just the war, but their whole brand. This is like if Apple lost a product launch to Radio Shack. They went from "we invented theater and Socratic dialogue" to “can we interest you in a really mediocre navy?”

Sparta, being the kind of people who would rate brunch a zero because it didn’t include combat or a face-punch, didn’t even enjoy their win. Honestly, can you imagine if Spartans had cold plunge access? They’d have conquered emotions next. They installed a puppet government so cruel it made DMV clerks seem emotionally available. The Thirty Tyrants, as they were cheerily known, made Athenian democracy look like the best open mic night in town.

But let’s be honest. Athens had it coming. All that chest-puffing about democracy while keeping slaves and excluding women from public life? It's like if Twitter were a city-state.

And just like every visionary tech founder who eventually faceplants into their own hubris, Athens got too big, too proud, and too in love with the sound of their own symposiums.

This Isn’t a Bank Run. It’s Economic LARPing.

Wall Street isn't fleeing the country. You're just watching capital shifts, not collapse. Here's why the doom narrative is theological heresy dressed in financial cosplay.

There’s a theme echoing across X lately — a narrative that we are in the “early stages of a bank run on the United States and the US dollar.” According to the gospel of paranoia, both foreign and domestic investors are supposedly bailing out of U.S. assets en masse, driven by fear, distrust, and some half-baked “Not-So-Golden Rule” that sounds like it was plagiarized from a bad episode of Billions.

The implication? The U.S. financial system is collapsing from within, the dollar is dead money walking, and everyone in “the business of Money” knows it — they’re just running for the exits before the lights go out.

This isn’t insight. It’s fear-mongering wrapped in market jargon. It’s financial cosplay — economic LARPing with a tinfoil twist. So let’s break it down.

This Isn’t a Bank Run. This is Drama School for Dismal Theorists.

A bank run means mass withdrawals from an actual bank that can’t cover them — leading to collapse. What we’re seeing is repositioning, rotation, normal capital movement in a volatile market. That’s not a fire drill. That’s called “Wednesday.”

The claim that "everyone on Wall Street is heading for the exits" is the kind of breathless nonsense that makes you wonder if these folks think the stock market is actually a haunted house. Are some reallocating to different asset classes? Yes. That’s called investing — not escaping a financial apocalypse.

The Not-So-Golden Rule Is Not-So-Great Logic

This supposed “rule” — basically a financial version of “screw others before they screw you” — sounds like something overheard in a bathroom stall at a crypto retreat. It’s not strategy. It’s paranoia with a podcast.

And speaking of paranoia…

Let Me Tell You About the Dinar Guy

I once talked to a guy who genuinely believed the dollar was about to collapse — and that the Iraqi Dinar would become the world’s new financial standard. Yes, he actually owned Dinar (don’t ask me how he bought it—maybe he was Q?) Yes, he also believed JFK Jr. was alive.

Talking to him felt like being Woody Allen in Annie Hall, telling Wayne, “You’re due back on planet Earth.”

This tweet — and others like it — give me the same energy. The kind of doom prophecy that demands you join the panic now, because if you wait, you’re the sucker. It's fear, not foresight. It's a Q-tier worldview in a business suit.

Confession: I’m Not an Economist

I have a Master’s in Theology. I couldn’t diagram a macro model if my student loans depended on it. But I know what heresy looks like — and when someone is twisting a legitimate concern into an apocalyptic fever dream, my theological spidey-sense goes off.

I may not understand the full mechanics of monetary policy, but I know the difference between a parable and a panic. And this whole "bank run on America" narrative? It’s not Revelation. It’s Revelation™ (you know, the Book of Revelation), now with extra gold-bug hysteria and a vague TikTok side hustle.

Reality: Capital Shifts Aren’t Collapse

Yes, money moves. Investors seek shelter. But that’s not a collapse — that’s the market breathing. The U.S. dollar remains the world’s reserve currency. U.S. Treasuries still receive massive inflows in times of volatility. If Wall Street were truly fleeing, they’d be heading for the exits holding gold bars and crying into their Vineyard Vines blazers.

Instead, they're buying short-term U.S. debt — the financial equivalent of hugging your blankie during a thunderstorm.

Final Word: Don’t Mistake X (Twitter) for Truth

We don’t need to downplay economic risks to call this narrative what it is: a theater production starring Fear as the lead and Facts locked out of the building.

You don’t need a CFA to recognize when someone is yelling “fire” for clicks. You just need to think clearly, read widely, and maybe not take monetary policy advice from someone who keeps their savings in Dinar under the mattress.

Stay informed. Stay calm. And when the end-times prophets come knocking with their panic portfolios, feel free to remind them: You’re due back on planet Earth.

The TEMU Jim Cramer: Harry Dent’s Greatest Misses

There are bad takes, and then there's Harry Dent. The man is less an economic forecaster and more of a financial performance artist whose medium is being wrong at scale. If Nostradamus and a Magic 8-Ball had a child raised exclusively on fear-mongering infographics, you'd get Dent—minus the accuracy.

For the past 25 years, Dent has been the boy who cried Dow 3,000. Only the boy is 70, wears a blazer, and sells books with titles like The Next Great Bubble Boom, which is basically like selling maps to Atlantis on Etsy.

Here’s a man who, in 1999, told us the Dow would hit 35,000 during the "Roaring 2000s." The Dow heard that and promptly face-planted, peaking just under 12,000 and ending the decade like a tired dad at a high school reunion: underwhelmed and balding.

Dent has called for “the crash of a lifetime” more often than most people call their mothers. Every time there's a market wobble, he crawls out of his financial panic bunker like Punxsutawney Phil on a meth bender, predicts another crash, and goes back to selling newsletters when it doesn’t happen.

Dent is so consistently wrong that savvy investors have started using him as a contrarian indicator. It’s basically the opposite of an ETF; it’s an FTD—Failed Timing Dent. Just take whatever Harry says, do the opposite, and watch your portfolio soar. Remember, this is also my advice regarding Jim Cramer.

Yes, he got Japan's asset bubble right in 1989 and spotted the dot-com bust in 2000. But that’s like predicting two snowstorms and then spending 25 years screaming "BLIZZARD" every time someone opens the freezer door.

Dent’s brand is fear. His products are charts, dread, and that particular genre of investment porn where a crash is always imminent and gold is the only safe harbor—unless you buy crypto, which he also said would collapse. (Spoiler: Bitcoin rallied. Sorry, Harry.)

He’s not a financial advisor. He’s a horror novelist who writes in Nasdaq. He makes Stephen King look like a children’s author.

So here’s the takeaway: if Harry Dent says the end is near, buy a yacht. If he says the Dow will implode, double down on your index fund. And if he ever gets one right again? Don’t worry—you’ll hear about it. Loudly. Repeatedly. Until 2047.

But let’s be honest: if this man were a GPS, we’d all be in a ditch.

The Hit List: Predictions That Aged Like Warm Milk

1999 – “The Roaring 2000s”: Dow to 35,000

Outcome: Dow barely hit 12,000 and ended the decade around 10,400.

Dent called it "roaring," but it whimpered like a bored housecat in a thunderstorm.

2006 – "Next Great Bubble Boom"

Outcome: The actual bubble popped in 2008. Boom? More like kaboom.

If this is what "great" looks like, I’d hate to see one of his bad bubbles.

2008 – "Great Depression Ahead"

Outcome: After a brief crash, the market staged a historic bull run.

So close. Just missed by a couple of decades and trillions in gains.

2011 – Dow to 3,000 by 2013

Outcome: It never dipped below 10,000. And then it soared.

Harry was only off by, oh, 200%.

2016 – Post-Trump Election Doom

Outcome: Dow exploded upward. MAGA, meet MOON.

Even Trump got this one more right, and his economic plan was mostly Twitter.

2017 – Crash Worse Than 2008

Outcome: Stocks and GDP kept climbing like they hadn’t read Dent’s book.

You know it’s bad when even the markets are ignoring your newsletter.

2021 – 80% Crash by Thanksgiving

Outcome: Turkey was fine. So were portfolios.

Pass the gravy, not the financial hysteria.

2022 – "Biggest Crash of Our Lifetime"

Outcome: Mild turbulence, then new highs in 2023-24.

The crash of a lifetime. If your lifetime ended in early Q1.

2023–2024 – Crypto Collapse & Market Panic

Outcome: Bitcoin and the S&P partied like it was 1999.

At this point, shorting Dent might outperform the S&P.

The ETF Era: When Dent Tried Going Pro

Turns out, being chronically wrong didn’t stop Dent from trying to monetize his clairvoyant ineptitude. He slapped his brand on not one, but two investment funds. Both met the same fate: a swift and embarrassing death.

AIM Dent Demographic Trends Fund

Launched: Late 1990s
Peak Assets: $2 billion (yes, billion).
Outcome: Lost 80% of assets, then quietly vanished into the mutual fund graveyard.

Harry blamed others. Naturally. Because nothing screams accountability like "they didn’t follow all my advice."

AdvisorShares Dent Tactical ETF (Ticker: DENT)

Launched: 2009
Performance: Lost 12.9% by mid-2012. Meanwhile, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index was up 42.7%.
Closure: Dent's firm resigned. The ETF was liquidated. Investor interest was... non-existent.

DENT the ETF lived up to its name: it made a dent—in your net worth.

Lessons Learned (Hopefully)

Brilliant economic theories don't always make brilliant portfolios.
If you need a new contrarian strategy, just ask: "What would Dent do?" Then do the opposite.

Dent's market calls are like Groundhog Day meets The Big Short, except the groundhog dies and the market doesn’t crash. If you're still listening to Harry Dent for market advice, congratulations—you've joined the Flat Earth Society of finance.

Conclusion: Harry Dent doesn’t need to be stopped. He needs to be preserved—in a museum labeled "Exhibit A: The Perils of Economic Pseudoscience."

That’s a Wrap

Another week, another pile of chaos gently sifted into something you can laugh at instead of cry about. Remember: the world isn't ending yet—it's just getting increasingly ridiculous at an accelerating pace. 🚦Signal & Noise is your weekly sanity shot—like a vaccine, but without the side effects of a smug Fauci press tour or RFK Jr. offering to sell you colloidal silver and a free-range 5G amulet.

Until next week: stay skeptical, stay savage, and if anyone tries to hand you a panic portfolio or a 17-hour health documentary about "the real truth," kindly smile, nod, and save your energy for the flamethrower. See you in the chaos, fellow troublemakers.

Remember, in all seriousness, say your daily prayers and stay positive—Lawain

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Sources for Harry Dent:

https://www.marottaonmoney.com/should-i-invest-in-the-harry-dent-sector-fund-in-australia/

https://dentsectorfund.com.au