ian

A car guy that loves the mortgage industry, or a mortgage guy that loves cars. Michigan based car guy, all things residential finance.

[ian @drianashton]

@WallStreetApes As if I needed another reason not to buy a Ford…

[Restoring Your Faith in Humanity @HumanityChad]

They put a German Shepherd in charge of babysitting a group of Doberman puppies…

[ian @drianashton]

@CollinRugg Reason number 82,182,124 to never move to New York.

[ian @drianashton]

@EricTeetsel The horse had short legs, or the guy?

[Charlie Bilello @charliebilello]

Insane stat: Healthcare and Social Assistance have added nearly 1.8 million private-sector jobs in the US since the end of 2023 while all of other industries combined have lost 127,800 jobs.

[ian @drianashton]

@elonmusk Pretty sweet, but what the hell was this filmed with? Can we get this dude's iPhone 3 upgraded?

[Heather Dow @PatriotPostGirl]

After almost a decade of living under the Michigan leftist girlboss mafia….

👎 45th for education
👎 6th worst infrastructure
👎 42nd for unemployment
👎 11th highest state for violent crime
👎 10th worst per capita personal income
👎 5th worst population growth
👎 41st on the U-Haul Growth Index
👎 12th worst fiscal stability
👎 one of the top ten states for highest gas tax

[ian @drianashton]

@FBIDirectorKash @dbongino @FBINewark Wow, 4 whole people? Only like 20,000,000 to go! 🤣

[ian @drianashton]

@nickgerli1 This could be the first time anyone in the history of the universe has referred to Seattle as part of the "sun belt"

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I have two stacks on my desk. The left stack is financial disclosure forms from members of Congress. The right stack is waivers for members who filed their financial disclosures late.

The right stack is always taller.

On Wednesday morning, I watched a soldier get arrested on CNN.

I am a Disclosure Analyst for the House Ethics Committee. I have held this position for eleven years. My job is to receive the forms, verify their completeness, and file them. I do not investigate. I do not flag. I do not refer. I file. I have a lanyard. The lanyard says ETHICS.

The soldier's name is Gannon Ken Van Dyke. He is thirty-eight years old. He was stationed at Fort Bragg. He was Special Forces. In December, he created an account on a prediction market called Polymarket. On January 2nd, he bet $32,500 that the president of Venezuela would be removed from power. On January 3rd, he helped remove the president of Venezuela from power. He collected $409,881.

He has been charged with five federal crimes. Commodities fraud. Wire fraud. Unlawful use of confidential government information. Theft of nonpublic government information. Unlawful monetary transaction. The Department of Justice called it "the first-ever insider trading prosecution on event contracts."

I watched this on the television in our break room. Then I walked back to my desk and processed a late financial disclosure from a member of the House Financial Services Committee who purchased $250,000 in bank stocks eleven days before his subcommittee held a closed-door hearing on proposed capital reserve changes.

The filing was forty-seven days late. The STOCK Act requires disclosure within forty-five days. The penalty for late filing is $200.

I waived it.

I waive most of them. In 2021, fifty-four members of Congress and senior staff violated the reporting rules. The fines were minimal. Most were waived. I have a form for the waiver. The form has a box that says "Reason." I write "administrative delay." In ethics, "administrative delay" means the member's office forgot and then remembered when a reporter called. My approval rate is one hundred percent. In any other field, that number would trigger an audit. In mine, it is called thoroughness.

Let me show you what I processed this year.

January. A senator on the Armed Services Committee sold defense contractor shares worth $1.2 million. Three days later, his committee received a classified briefing that the Iran campaign had exceeded its projected cost by 340%. The stock dropped 8%. He filed the disclosure sixty-one days late. I calculated the fine. $200. His chief of staff asked if it could be waived. He did not ask what the senator traded on. Nobody asks that. The form does not have a field for it. I waived the fine. The senator's portfolio returned 23.4% in 2025. The S&P 500 returned 16.8%.

February. A representative on the Energy and Commerce Committee bought pharmaceutical stocks worth $400,000. Two weeks later, her committee advanced a bill that would extend patent exclusivity for the exact drug class she purchased. The stocks rose 14%. She filed on time. There was no fine. There was no investigation. There was nothing to investigate because buying stocks in companies regulated by your own committee is not illegal. It is legal. The STOCK Act made it legal by making it disclosed. In Congress, disclosed means legal. In my office, legal means filed.

March. A member whose spouse manages a portfolio worth $9.2 million reported forty-three separate transactions in a single quarter. Twelve of them were in sectors directly affected by legislation the member co-sponsored. The timing on eight of those twelve was within a two-week window of committee action. I logged all forty-three. None were flagged. We do not flag. We file.

I asked my supervisor once what would happen if I flagged a filing. She said we do not have a form for that. I never asked again.

In 2020, I processed 847 disclosures. In 2023, 1,211. In 2025, 1,614. The number of enforcement actions in each of those years was zero. The numerator changes. The denominator does not.

I want to tell you about the soldier again.

He made $409,881. He tried to delete his Polymarket account by calling customer service and saying he lost access to his email. He moved his profits into a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then into a new brokerage account. He used his real identity. He placed thirteen bets. Every single one was connected to an operation he personally participated in.

In my eleven years, I have processed disclosures from members of Congress who traded on:

Pending FDA approvals they learned about in committee.
Defense appropriations they voted on.
Trade policy they negotiated.
Pandemic response measures they drafted.
Interest rate decisions they were briefed on before the public.

None of them have been charged. None of them have been investigated by the Department of Justice. None of them have been referred to the SEC. The STOCK Act has produced zero prosecutions since it was signed on April 4th, 2012.

Fourteen years. Five hundred and thirty-five members. $635 million in trades last year alone. Zero cases.

My daughter asked me once what happens when someone breaks the rules. I told her we write it down. She asked what happens after that. I said it depends. She was nine. She is twenty now. It does not depend. Nothing happens after that.

The soldier made $409,881 and faces decades in prison. Nancy Pelosi entered Congress in 1987 with a portfolio worth approximately $785,000. It is now worth $133.7 million. That is a return of 16,930%. The Dow Jones returned 2,300% over the same period. Professional fund managers who beat the market for three consecutive years are considered exceptional. She has beaten it for thirty-seven. If a hedge fund produced those returns, the SEC would subpoena the records on a Thursday. She produced them from a building with a chapel and a gift shop.

She announced her retirement last year. No investigation was opened. No disclosure was flagged. Her filings were on time. In my office, on time means compliant. Compliant means closed.

I want to tell you about the fine.

$200. That is the maximum penalty for violating the STOCK Act's disclosure requirements. $200 for a member of Congress whose portfolio gained $4.7 million in a single quarter. I calculated what $200 represents as a percentage of $4.7 million. It is 0.004%. I could not find a comparison that made it meaningful. It is less than the price of the parking pass in the Rayburn garage. It is less than lunch at the members' dining room if you order the crab cakes, which I am told are excellent though I eat at my desk.

Since 2012, thirty-one bills have been introduced to restrict congressional trading. I keep a list. The list is longer than the STOCK Act itself.

On March 5th, 2026, a representative from Michigan introduced the thirty-second. He called it the "No Getting Rich in Congress Act." The bill would prohibit the President, Vice President, members of Congress, and their spouses from trading individual stocks, cryptocurrency, futures, and commodities while in office.

The bill was referred to committee. The committee has not scheduled a hearing. The committee is chaired by a member whose spouse executed $2.1 million in trades last year.

The bill will be reviewed. In my office, reviewed means read. Read means acknowledged. Acknowledged means a status has been assigned. A status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

The soldier used classified information to make $409,881 on a prediction market. He has been charged with five federal crimes. The Department of Justice announced the case on the same day I processed three disclosures from members who traded on committee knowledge worth a combined $3.8 million.

The difference between the soldier and the members is not what they did. It is the building they did it in. He did it from Fort Bragg. They did it from the Capitol. He used a prediction market. They used the New York Stock Exchange. He bet on a military operation. They bet on the legislation they write.

He did not write the law. They did. They wrote the STOCK Act. Then they funded its enforcement at zero dollars. Then they set its maximum penalty at $200. Then they gave my office the authority to waive it. Then they traded $635 million.

The soldier flew to Caracas. He breached a compound. He put his body between a mission and a bullet. The people who ordered the operation were in a building with a credenza and sparkling water. They did not go to Caracas. They went to their brokerage accounts. The soldier made $409,881 and is now in federal custody. The people who knew what he was going to do before he did it made more and filed less. His prosecution is not a failure of the system. It is the system. One conviction per decade, at the lowest level, so the briefing slides can say enforcement exists. The $409,881 is not the crime. It is the cost of making $635 million look supervised.

In my field, we call this self-regulation.

The soldier's Polymarket account has been frozen. His military career is over. He will spend years in federal prison. My office will process every congressional disclosure filed this year. Every trade logged. Every $200 fine calculated and waived. The system is immaculate.

Fourteen years. Zero prosecutions. $635 million a year. A 16,930% return.

I have not leaked a document. I have not filed a complaint. I have not deviated from the process one single time. The process was written by the people whose forms I process.

As long as the disclosures go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

My lanyard still says ETHICS. In eleven years, nobody has asked me to define the word.

[ian @drianashton]

@ChairmanSelig @CFTC @SDNYnews What an absolute joke.

This one isn’t even about political party - could there be a more blatant example of Rule for thee, Not for me?

Proof positive that the American political machine exists to crush the people.

[ian @drianashton]

@CollinRugg Only Congress is allowed to do that.

[ian @drianashton]

Shocking literally noone, Rolling Stone complies a list of random bands from some random staffers playlist and calls it the top 50 rock bands. U2, Oasis, Genesis, T Rex should be far lower. RHCP, Black Sabbath, Allman Brothers, GnR, Metallica, Pearl Jame should be mich higher. The Beach Boys, The Smiths, Joy Division, Wilco, Kraftwek, and Franz Ferdinand don't belong on the list at all, and where is RUSH, Van Halen, Fleetwood Mac, Motley Crue, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix...

[ian @drianashton]

@MikeBales “Funny think about weekends when you’re unemployed, they don’t mean quite so much, except you get to hang out with your workin friends”
Les Claypool, Primus

[ian @drianashton]

@matthewmaddock sHe looks like Cruella DeVille.

[ian @drianashton]

@2024dion I don’t understand your correlation. People born in Michigan, stay in Michigan. If the baseline for people leaving is higher, the number of people moving there would have to be exponentially higher to offset, no?

[ian @drianashton]

I often wonder this in the school pick up line, also.

[John Arnold @johnarnold]

Do the people in the 15 cars backed up at the Starbucks drive-thru not realize that if they park and walk in, there's no line at the counter, or do they just dislike getting out of their car that much.

[ian @drianashton]

@WallStreetMav Why do you think rates will ever be back below 4%?

Absent government intervention, what motivation would any investor have to lock up capital for potentially 30 years, with an annual yeild of of under 4%?

[Fandom Pulse @fandompulse]

Project Hail Mary writer Andy Weir on social commentary in books:

"I dislike social commentary. Like… I really hate it. When I’m reading a book, I just want to be entertained, not preached at by the author. Plus, it ruins the wonder of the story if I know the author has a political or social axe to grind. I no longer speculate about all possible outcomes of the story because I know for a fact that the universe of that book will conspire to ensure that the author’s political agenda is validated. I hate that."

"I put no politics or social commentary into my stories at all. Anyone who thinks they see something like that is reading it in on their own. I have no point to make, and I’m not trying to affect the reader’s opinion on anything. My sole job is to entertain, and I stick to that."

"To that end, I also don’t talk about my personal political opinions publicly. I don’t want readers to even know, honestly. I don’t want that in the back of their minds as they read my stuff."

Is this why he has the #1 sci-fi movie in decades?

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

There is a near-perfect correlation between US oil prices and US CPI inflation, as shown in our below analysis.

As WTI crude surges above $112/barrel, we believe the US economy is bracing for 3.5%+ CPI inflation, particularly if current prices persist through April.

Asset owners will be the only winners in the long-run.