Michael Size 🇪🇺

Near Futurism

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

Heat pumps done right! 😍

Decarbonization should be profitable to the customer 💸
Don't spend your life savings on a heat pump. Instead, use a heat pump to make savings on your energy bills 😌

My report and recommendation after 3 years 👇
(link in replies)

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

The US doesn't actually recognize the Universal Declaration of Human Rights like EU member states do, which is why the US state dept. can suddenly decide that violence against women is not a human rights issue, but abortion is, based on whatever is most profitable for the US gov

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

Memories of all the boys and girls on here who told me that the US is developing AI privately and that's good, and the EU government investment in AI is bad

If the gov is to be involved in AI at all, the way that the EU did it is certainly superior to this.

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

I'm no longer the only one saying it, and it's good to see that there is now broad agreement among analysts: this peace plan, as written, is intended to sow a much much bigger war in a few more years.

[Tim Mak @timkmak]

Good day to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.
Still.
But we are back in a reality where Ukraine is being pushed toward capitulation.
Myroslava wants her son to live in a free world.
She voiced The Counteroffensive's stance: Trump's peace plan is a roadmap to more war.

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

"What we really need is another good war"

Americans hope that a WW2-scale Russo-European war will be the jackpot that their export industry needs to save their economy, which is why they're trying to set up such a war with things like the 28 point plan.

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

Ukraine's only security guarantee is its own army and weapons, and to cap them means that you're already trying to set up the next invasion.

The only belligerent who should have its army capped is Russia.

That is, if you want peace. I know America doesn't want peace. 2/2

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

A US security guarantee is worth 0, as the US has already violated several of its treaties, including with Ukraine. Not a single county on the planet currently believes that the US would honor its NATO treaty obligations 1/2

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

Russia's war effort had culminated in November 2024.

We could have had a ceasefire since the spring if the US hadn't gone on its Russia support campaign. That is what reignited the flow of volunteers and capital towards the invasion.

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

I agree, except on the joint part

Every EU member state should develop its own 100% sovereign nuclear supply chain and means of delivery

[POLITICOEurope @POLITICOEurope]

European nations should develop a joint tactical nuclear deterrent to counter Russia’s expanding arsenal, Airbus board chair René Obermann said today, breaking one of Europe’s biggest defense taboos.
https://t.co/4sueEChEQO

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

I was recently researching this out of curiosity

The US government has up to $6T of hidden debt through the guarantee on MBS, although a realistic ceiling on how much of that can "come due" when the housing market crashes is probably about $1T. 2008 was $0.2T

[Peter Schiff @PeterSchiff]

The Fannie & Freddie Boondoggle: The Biggest Wealth Transfer From Taxpayers to Hedge Funds in U.S. History

@BillAckman is pushing a plan to restructure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and “release” them from conservatorship. He claims it will modernize the housing finance system and create a huge win for taxpayers. That is simply not true. It is a carefully engineered boondoggle that would hand Ackman and other hedge fund investors a massive windfall while leaving taxpayers with zero upside and exposing the U.S. housing market to even greater danger than before the 2008 financial crisis.

The government cannot IPO Fannie or Freddie. To do that it would have to publicly disclose whether their debt is guaranteed or not. If it admits the debt is not guaranteed, mortgage rates would rise and home prices would fall, something Trump will not allow. If it explicitly guarantees the debt, Congress must approve it, and that will never happen. Ackman’s plan avoids this entire political problem by keeping the GSEs in conservatorship so the government never has to admit the truth. Nothing real is reformed. The guarantee remains. The public is kept in the dark. And private investors are given a path to cash out.

The plan is not privatization. It is fake privatization. Before 2008 the guarantee behind Fannie and Freddie was implicit. After the bailout it became explicit in practice. Ackman wants the GSEs to remain government backed while distributing dividends to private shareholders. That is the most extreme form of moral hazard: private profits paired with fully socialized losses. Underwriting standards will weaken. Risk will rise. The mortgage bubble will grow even larger. And because the guarantee is now unmistakably real, the next collapse will be even more devastating.

The truth is the best long-term solution for both the housing market and the broader economy is to shut the GSEs down entirely and get the government out of mortgage finance. That would bring real market discipline back into housing and end this cycle of moral hazard once and for all. But that solution is politically untenable because it would create short-term pain. Home prices would fall, affordability would improve, and the correction would trigger losses for lenders and homeowners who depend on inflated valuations. Given that political reality, the status quo is far superior to what Ackman is proposing. It is the lesser of the two evils. His plan does not reform the system. It simply inflates a bigger bubble, increases the risks, and hands hedge funds a windfall at taxpayer expense.

But it gets even worse. Ackman wants to slash the capital requirement for the GSEs from the current 4.5% of their guarantee book to just 2.5%. This is one of the most dangerous parts of the entire proposal. The 4.5% standard is already low compared to what a normal financial institution would need to survive a downturn. Cutting it nearly in half virtually guarantees that even a mild decline in home prices will wipe out the GSEs’ capital cushion. Lower capital means higher return on equity, which drives the share price higher and enriches Ackman and other investors. But it leaves the housing market far more fragile than before the 2008 crash. It forces the GSEs to take on more risk to generate enough earnings to justify their valuations. And because the guarantee is explicit, there is no market discipline left. The GSEs take the risks and taxpayers take the losses.

Right now taxpayers benefit from every dollar of profit the GSEs earn because all profits are retained and invested in Treasuries. Ackman’s plan changes that. The first phase does not alter anything because dividends to common shareholders cannot be paid until the GSEs rebuild capital. During this phase taxpayers still indirectly benefit from retained earnings just as they do today.

The second phase is where taxpayers start losing money. Ackman owns junior preferred stock and its entire value depends on dividends resuming. Once the Senior Preferred is forgiven, the junior preferred dividends begin flowing again. That money is currently retained and invested in Treasuries, but under Ackman’s plan it goes straight to private investors. This is the first real wealth transfer from taxpayers to hedge funds.

The third phase is the most dangerous. Once the GSEs are deemed fully capitalized, common dividends will resume. Treasury will technically own nearly 80% of the common stock after exercising its warrants, but it will not receive dividends on that stake. If it did, it would reignite the political firestorm that surrounded the Net Worth Sweep and hand Trump’s critics an easy attack. Treasury will therefore likely hold its 80% only on paper. That means private shareholders, who own only 20% of the company, will effectively receive 100% of the real cash profits. The government’s stake becomes economically meaningless. It produces no dividends, no cash, and no realized benefit of any kind. It exists solely for political optics so Trump can claim he created a multibillion dollar paper gain that cannot and will not ever be realized.

In effect the GSEs return to the same economic structure that existed before conservatorship, except now it is worse. Private investors once again receive all the profits. Taxpayers once again bear all the losses. But the moral hazard is far greater because the guarantee is explicit and undeniable rather than implicit and theoretical. The GSEs will be encouraged to take even more risk because their earnings must support dividend payments rather than building real capital. That accelerates the expansion of the housing bubble and ensures that when the downturn arrives, the capital cushion will be thin, the losses will be enormous, and the government will be forced to step in again.

When that happens the government’s 80% stake will collapse to zero along with the private shares. All of the paper profits Trump once bragged about will be wiped out. The dividends paid to private shareholders will be gone. The junior preferreds that were revived will be worthless again. And taxpayers will absorb 100% of the losses. The only people who will have walked away with real money are the hedge funds who got in cheap and cashed out during the brief window when the stock price was artificially inflated by the cancellation of the Senior Preferred.

Ackman claims this plan is the first step toward true privatization. That is nonsense. If the GSEs are not ready to be privatized now after sixteen years of conservatorship they never will be. Ackman knows this. He will be long gone by the time investors discover that the guarantee will never be removed and that real privatization is politically impossible. His goal is simple: get the Senior Preferred wiped out, get dividends restarted on the shares he owns, push the common stock price higher, and sell his shares before the next crisis hits. The burden of the collapse will fall entirely on taxpayers.

This is not reform. It is not modernization. It is not a win for taxpayers. It is a massive wealth transfer disguised as policy. It ensures private investors receive one hundred percent of the profits while taxpayers remain exposed to 100% of the losses. The next bailout will be larger than the last because the moral hazard will be greater, the bubble will be bigger, and the government guarantee will be absolute. This plan creates the most dangerous and irresponsible structure imaginable. It benefits hedge funds and politicians, and it leaves American taxpayers holding the bag.

I’ll be hosting an X Space on Monday, February 24th at 9:00 AM ET, to explain how this plan works, why it puts taxpayers at extreme risk, and how hedge funds stand to gain billions at the public’s expense. I will answer questions, and expose the full truth behind this so-called recap and release. Anyone concerned about the housing market and the future of American finance should be there.

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

The reason why US pulled the troops out of Romania a few weeks back is to give a boost to Russia to continue the war.

This has long been a Russian strategic goal. Helping Russia achieve strategic goals like this boosts their access to capital and to manpower to continue the war

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

The reason why Hungary has been doing everything in its power to bring war to the region is because it views Trianon as an open topic, and is trying to form the circumstances that would allow it to reshape the borders.

Everything Hungary does is towards this strategic end goal.

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

Wtf is this?

Why is the Polish MFA putting Poland as 2nd to China. China is so far behind a country like Poland, they can't even see it with a telescope.

The only thing propping up China's global status is population.

[Ministry of Foreign Affairs 🇵🇱 @PolandMFA]

💬 Which two countries have achieved the greatest economic success in the world? First, China, and second, Poland.

You all travel, you all have friends and family abroad - you all see how perceptions of Poland have changed, and changed for the better.

| Deputy PM, FM @sikorskiradek during a meeting at @RODM_8

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

"State capitalism" is communism with fascist aesthetics

Government pricing and government allocation of capital may be excusable during force majeure, although even then they cause more problems in the long term, but as an economic strategy, both of them need to be market-based.

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

The EU refugee crisis was literally engineered by the USA

If European powers had intervened to stop mass bombing of urban areas in Syria, like it did in Libya, there would have been no Syrian refugee wave, like there was no Libyan refugee wave, but USA pressured them out of it

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

Bros in the senate caved under zero pressure. One party ahh state

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

@Robotbeat Any organization can create a body of strategists and tacticians who embody 100% of the publicly available knowledge on war

The fact that US tech defense startups don't bother to do this doesn't mean China doesn't

How many wars did Ukraine fight before?

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

I voted against the xAI proposal and I'm really surprised that the vote went my way

At the very least, it shows that there are investors who are not interested in burning money on LLMs

Which makes you wonder: just how small is the pool of VCs funding this entire bubble?

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

https://t.co/fsR0n6MQTS

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

Heat pumps done right! 😍

Decarbonization should be profitable to the customer 💸
Don't spend your life savings on a heat pump. Instead, use a heat pump to make savings on your energy bills 😌

My report and recommendation after 3 years 👇
(link in replies)

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

@SantoroSystems @KenGWiebe I wonder, does any human actually believe the "control" story, or do they just repeat it because they believe it will make for better propaganda than the real motivations?

[Michael Size 🇪🇺 @SizeMichael]

@SantoroSystems @KenGWiebe Bingo.

All the "control" propaganda, yet the package mysteriously lands precisely at the tipping point of "the highest amount of money that is rational for the shareholders to pay". Not a dollar less or more