Eclipse Capital Management
Letter to my clients
I write to you today not to gloat. It would be wildly inappropriate to brag about the success of our hedge fund while devastation rains down around us. Instead, I write to resign, and as an attempt to impart some insight while this platform allows me such indulgences. Like any smart gambler, I’m walking away from the table while I can. And make no mistake, that is what we are: We may wear tailored suits, drink expensive wine, and drive fast cars, but we are degenerate gamblers.
You have seen your purchasing power fall, even as you’ve worked toward a better life, and you’ve wondered why you can’t retire, or can no longer afford your cancer medication. Allow me to draw back the curtain. What we have is a question of chemical dependency, and it is as addictive as any drug. If you must ask "How much money does any one person need?” you fundamentally misunderstand this system. Money becomes an abstract number — when it goes up you’re happy, when it goes down you get sad.
As a short trader my job was to discover fraud. That’s when you push your chips in because that company will be found out and that company will fail. I chose a short position on the whole system because the whole thing is broken. That’s no surprise to anyone of course, but the extent of it would shock just about anyone. The amount of legislation designed to prevent catastrophes like this that instead was blocked by special interest groups would make your stomach turn. It did mine, though not so much that I didn’t place my bets. But here’s the thing: It’s just going to happen again and again. The board will be reset, the players may change, but it’s not anything noble. It’s just more addicts, just trying to get their fix.
So I'm getting out, not because it's cruel, but because it's boring. The same old white men are playing the same game ad infinitum, and I’ve already won. Its contrived. If you saw it in a movie you’d roll your eyes. I learned mathematics to better understand the complexity of the universe, not the inane repetition of a washed-up economic paradigm. There’s a big new challenge out there, full of intricacy and intrigue, for those that are clever enough to spot it. Markets are small, but humans are big. Some things are still mysterious. May you be as fortunate in your search as I.
Mariam Sadir
Dear Karen,
There is no easy way to say this. I’m leaving. Throughout my military career there have been many goodbyes, but this will be the last of them. You know better than anyone that if I’m doing something, there’s a damn good reason for it. I won’t apologize. But I’ll try to explain myself. I owe you that.
All my life, all I ever wanted to do was save the world. My father enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor. I was 8, and it's all anyone in town ever talked about to me. No matter what I accomplished, it would always be compared to him leaving us for a higher purpose. My mother had an altar to him that you could see as soon as you walked in the door. Dying in battle might be the closest a man can come to godhood.
In Korea, I got my first taste of it, what war was, what it looked and smelled like. It was anticlimactic. It didn't look how I imagined it would, like the stories the old men at the lodge used to tell. Vietnam wasn't much better, and the intelligence service is a bureaucratic wasteland. I loved the time we shared, but I think you always suspected my heart and mind were somewhere else. Regardless, you stood by me dutifully, which shows more courage than I've ever had.
Yesterday America was attacked. This is my Pearl Harbor, and as abhorrent as it sounds, I've never felt more purpose in my life. I know we talked about me retiring in a year or two, but I can't do that now. The bureaucrats are scared, and that's when the soldiers get to do what needs to be done. I've been preparing for this my whole life and I can't let anyone get in the way of that, even someone who has stood by me for 48 years. I know as my wife you will forgive me, but as my best friend, you will hate me. This is my calling, my war, and my last chance to live up to the standard I have set for myself, like my father did before me.
Sincerely Yours,
Dylan
The Matriarchs of America’s Midnight
June Nguyen, CE News
Melinda Hall credits herself as being the first. Her husband, Terrance Hall, worked on K street in 2017, and she’s always referred to herself as a socialite by trade. A week after the 2018 crash, Terrance hung himself in their garage with an extension cord. Melinda talks about it like she’s discussing what she had for dinner last night. “After Terrance, I was broken, but now I’m whole,” she tells me. “I wouldn’t go back to that empty life for anything in the world. I didn’t know what happiness was until I found Curtis.”
Janice Mayfield can’t remember if she was the third or fourth member to come to the family. “Girls were coming in and out all the time,” she says. “Some women lack discipline. Curtis ran a strict household, and some girls were trying to get clean and just ... didn’t make it.” Janice had just started a hair salon with a high-interest bank loan when the collapse hit. “When you start a business you’re already vulnerable. Then something like that happens and you don’t even have a chance.” The domino effect that she describes is terrifying. Couldn’t pay off the loan, the bank took the house, welfare shut down, homeless shelter filled to capacity and extremely dangerous. “I know how we look to people with the sex stuff and the costumes, but where were those people when we needed help? Nowhere. It was only Curtis.”
Sally Burton rounds out the three, referred to collectively by the media as “The Maidens of America’s MIdnight.” “Like, the whole 50s aesthetic is dope,” says Sally. “Curtis was always talking about family. Well family is so overrated, I just want a place where I can like, express myself and be happy.” Sally isn’t as forward as the the other two; she dances around her story. You get a sense she didn’t interface well with normal life. It’s interesting that the others accept her — Sally is the reason it all fell apart.
The missing centerpiece of this family is the infamous Curtis Cant. When I asked the women who he was to them they all used the same title: “Father”. Sally rolled her eyes when she said it, but she said it nonetheless. Curtis’s father, Danny, rolled his eyes as well. “It’s still so strange to me he would use that word,” Danny says. “I always thought he hated me, even as a little kid. He was always so open and loving to his mother, but around me he just shut down. But I know why. I saw him for what he was, and I don't think he has any use for anyone that knows he's lying every goddamned minute of the day.”
In 2015, Curtis got three years in San Quentin for extortion, pandering, and kidnapping, and when he got out he had a decent inheritance from his mother waiting for him. He put all of it into a medium-sized condo in Calabasas that he bought from an elderly couple right before the collapse. The house looks like a time capsule from the Cold War era; none of the maidens who still reside there know if Curtis redesigned it that way or bought it like that. Regardless, it became the iconic visual setting of the family.
After the collapse, Curtis started inviting women from the shelters to live with him. As Janice mentioned, many women were coming and going, and Melinda’s claim that she was first contradicts other accounts. At one point, I was told, upwards of 30 women were staying in the house. “The shelters were frightening,” Janice recounts. “There were so many people, sexual assault and drug use was everywhere. It was a really bad time. I practically jumped into Curtis’ arms when he chose me. The fact that they took our father away is proof that he was right. It’s the system that’s wrong, only family matters.”
Melinda Hall (left) Janice Mayfield (center) Sally Burton (right) Curtis Cant (front)
(CONT)
In March of 2019, Sally showed up on her own; she was 15 at the time. Her father hired an investigator to find her, and he reported his investigation to Bastion. What followed was an all-you-can-eat buffet for the media outlets: A 15-year-old found in a house with a bunch of women dressed up in clothes from the 50’s, all calling an ex-con “father”. Curtis Cant was immediately taken into custody and from there vanished without a trace.
As the country begins to heal so do the last three women living in the house, each claiming she is bearing Curtis’ child. Sally says she's not entirely sure, but she's hopeful. It's clear they all love and look after each other like a family. “He’s coming back, he tells all of us in our dreams,” says Melinda. “Maiden is such a patriarchal word; I hate that word. The media paints us as these weak, sheep girls, victimized by a cult. I was weak when I was hosting dinner parties for the people that broke this country, that’s what a cult looks like. Now I’m powerful. We’re not maidens, we’re fucking Matriarchs!”
Booth, John W. Death of the American Narrative. 2nd ed., Cambridge, MA.
Harvard University Press, 2022.
Death of the American Narrative
The body of America died in 2018 when its economy collapsed. A country can not persist without its lifeblood — the currency that flows in and out of its many streets and waterways. R.I.P. United States of America, 1776 - 2018. But the country’s soul was in jeopardy long before its body gave up the ghost. The soul of a country can not be quantified by its GDP, but must be sustained by its narrative, the purpose and the story that define it.
For America, this story began as it was beget, in an exodus from Britain’s oppression, across the Atlantic and into the dignity of self-authorship. Over time, this literal narrative transformed into a metaphor that permeated even the minutiae of American life. Americans told themselves that, by owning your own business, leaving a bad marriage, even winning the lottery, one might rise out of oppression.
For centuries, this story moved us collectively forward, bolstered by three founding ideals:. Democracy, which tells us “everyone has a voice;” Capitalism, which says, “everyone has a chance;” and Judeo-Christian values, which preach, “everyone receives justice.” These ideals pretend to level the playing field, but how can such concepts be interpreted in view of decades of disillusionment? Do we and can we still believe it?
As the functions of democracy were exposed, the story evaporated. When Senator McCarthy televised his blacklist trials, Marxism flourished in the universities. Nightly coverage of the Vietnam War spread uncertainty, even among the moderate American family, regarding the intentions of the government. News coverage that emphasized profitability over integrity discovered failure was more compelling (and sold better) than success. Every corporate criminal that walks and every innocent, impoverished, African-American murdered by the police, chips away at who we think we are.
We’ve eaten from the tree of knowledge and now we know how naked and vulnerable we are. Our country faces a tragic conundrum. The freedom and accessibility of our information prevents a return to blissful ignorance, but still we must have a soul. We have been a technocratic corporatocracy, for better or worse, for decades. The corporate edict of infinite growth is now our story, and we, as individuals, are obligated to strive toward greatness. If the Narrative of the U.S.A. was the American Dream, the Narrative of the Commonwealth will be a people coming together to unlock all our infinite human potential and move forward in unison.
Re-Branding the Revolution
Thomas Quinn, CE News
Washington, D.C. — On Friday, half a million protesters from all over the country assembled here to march against the newly instated Commonwealth. Primarily made up of young women, many 15 years of age, the event felt more like a carnival than a protest. Balloons outnumbered picket signs, chants gave way to songs, and girls wearing face paint shouted “We want our brand back!” The protest was arranged by FEED influencer and Republik immigrant Misa Kitano, whose digital influence spans tens of millions.
On the day the Commonwealth took control, Kitano posted a question to her FEED: “Who owns me now?” FEED is owned by Evoke, which is a part of the bigger mega-corporation, The Commonwealth — which was suddenly running the country. “I know being owned by a corporation isn’t ideal and comes with complications, but I agreed to them,” she said in an interview prior to the march. To her, this was part of building a new life, away from the Republik and its authoritarianism. “But my brand is owned by the new government now, and I never agreed to that.” Like everything she does, Kitano’s campaign seems precisely timed to the zeitgeist: With the United States’ judicial branch hanging on as the last connection to that erstwhile government and the constitutional convention still underway, freedom of speech is currently in flux. Kitano understands this, and her celebrity gives her both the platform and motive to lead this particular fight.
Misa Kitano
@MisaKitano
Who owns me now?
Kitano, 22, was a regional celebrity in Japan before the unification of the Republik. She lip synced at fashion shows and corporate events and entered idol competitions. “Things changed in Japan almost overnight,” she said. “I always chose my setlist — fun, poppy stuff like Beyonce´ — but out of nowhere I started being handed traditional Chinese songs. Nobody said I had to do them, but they kind of implied it.” She gained her American following after hosting a FEED Q&A when she fled the Republik with her father using falsified documents.
The march is colorful and positive, a stark contrast to the violence that broke out when the Freeloader Rights Movement rallied in the same location five years ago. But to some, especially those from a generation that still clings to the American Dream, Kitano’s popularity, and the movement she is heading, is mystifying. Clara Stack, who organized the Freeloader Rights march, sees it as a farce. “Sadly, change only comes by way of blood and sacrifice, otherwise no one will pay attention,” she says. But more people are paying attention — the D.C. march alone is five times larger than the Freeloader Rights event, and related protests in other cities nearly double the total attendance.
Blue lip gloss and blonde braided pigtails, eschewing any particular style but inventing one that blends high fashion with the mundane, Kitano may appear on any day with copious accessories or none at all; in a baggy, frumpy-but-expensive crew-neck logo sweatshirt or a tailored fur jacket. In the late evening on this warm day in June, she took the stage in tight jean overalls and a loose red hoodie which neither obscured nor glorified her non-traditional appearance.
(CONT)
Before she sang, she gave a speech that encapsulates the new movement perfectly. “Branding isn’t just about selling yourself, it’s buying yourself back from a system that thinks it can own you,” she said. “In a country run by a corporation, your brand is who you are, and we can’t let them take that. I will not have my identity stolen again by any authority”.
More than just a rallying cry, more than a protest about corporate ethics, Kitano’s speech turned the focus to constitutional freedom. Her appearance, her syntax, her youth may prevent an older generation from realizing what she is doing, but the younger one hears her, taking a new country for what it is and doing their best to color it the way they want it, whether anyone understands or not.
Eclipse Capital Management
Letter to my clients
I write to you today not to gloat. It would be wildly inappropriate to brag about the success of our hedge fund while devastation rains down around us. Instead, I write to resign, and as an attempt to impart some insight while this platform allows me such indulgences. Like any smart gambler, I’m walking away from the table while I can. And make no mistake, that is what we are: We may wear tailored suits, drink expensive wine, and drive fast cars, but we are degenerate gamblers.
You have seen your purchasing power fall, even as you’ve worked toward a better life, and you’ve wondered why you can’t retire, or can no longer afford your cancer medication. Allow me to draw back the curtain. What we have is a question of chemical dependency, and it is as addictive as any drug. If you must ask "How much money does any one person need?” you fundamentally misunderstand this system. Money becomes an abstract number — when it goes up you’re happy, when it goes down you get sad.
As a short trader my job was to discover fraud. That’s when you push your chips in because that company will be found out and that company will fail. I chose a short position on the whole system because the whole thing is broken. That’s no surprise to anyone of course, but the extent of it would shock just about anyone. The amount of legislation designed to prevent catastrophes like this that instead was blocked by special interest groups would make your stomach turn. It did mine, though not so much that I didn’t place my bets. But here’s the thing: It’s just going to happen again and again. The board will be reset, the players may change, but it’s not anything noble. It’s just more addicts, just trying to get their fix.
So I'm getting out, not because it's cruel, but because it's boring. The same old white men are playing the same game ad infinitum, and I’ve already won. Its contrived. If you saw it in a movie you’d roll your eyes. I learned mathematics to better understand the complexity of the universe, not the inane repetition of a washed-up economic paradigm. There’s a big new challenge out there, full of intricacy and intrigue, for those that are clever enough to spot it. Markets are small, but humans are big. Some things are still mysterious. May you be as fortunate in your search as I.
Mariam Sadir
Dear Karen,
There is no easy way to say this. I’m leaving. Throughout my military career there have been many goodbyes, but this will be the last of them. You know better than anyone that if I’m doing something, there’s a damn good reason for it. I won’t apologize. But I’ll try to explain myself. I owe you that.
All my life, all I ever wanted to do was save the world. My father enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor. I was 8, and it's all anyone in town ever talked about to me. No matter what I accomplished, it would always be compared to him leaving us for a higher purpose. My mother had an altar to him that you could see as soon as you walked in the door. Dying in battle might be the closest a man can come to godhood.
In Korea, I got my first taste of it, what war was, what it looked and smelled like. It was anticlimactic. It didn't look how I imagined it would, like the stories the old men at the lodge used to tell. Vietnam wasn't much better, and the intelligence service is a bureaucratic wasteland. I loved the time we shared, but I think you always suspected my heart and mind were somewhere else. Regardless, you stood by me dutifully, which shows more courage than I've ever had.
Yesterday America was attacked. This is my Pearl Harbor, and as abhorrent as it sounds, I've never felt more purpose in my life. I know we talked about me retiring in a year or two, but I can't do that now. The bureaucrats are scared, and that's when the soldiers get to do what needs to be done. I've been preparing for this my whole life and I can't let anyone get in the way of that, even someone who has stood by me for 48 years. I know as my wife you will forgive me, but as my best friend, you will hate me. This is my calling, my war, and my last chance to live up to the standard I have set for myself, like my father did before me.
Sincerely Yours,
Dylan
The Matriarchs of America’s Midnight
June Nguyen, CE News
Melinda Hall credits herself as being the first. Her husband, Terrance Hall, worked on K street in 2017, and she’s always referred to herself as a socialite by trade. A week after the 2018 crash, Terrance hung himself in their garage with an extension cord. Melinda talks about it like she’s discussing what she had for dinner last night. “After Terrance, I was broken, but now I’m whole,” she tells me. “I wouldn’t go back to that empty life for anything in the world. I didn’t know what happiness was until I found Curtis.”
Janice Mayfield can’t remember if she was the third or fourth member to come to the family. “Girls were coming in and out all the time,” she says. “Some women lack discipline. Curtis ran a strict household, and some girls were trying to get clean and just ... didn’t make it.” Janice had just started a hair salon with a high-interest bank loan when the collapse hit. “When you start a business you’re already vulnerable. Then something like that happens and you don’t even have a chance.” The domino effect that she describes is terrifying. Couldn’t pay off the loan, the bank took the house, welfare shut down, homeless shelter filled to capacity and extremely dangerous. “I know how we look to people with the sex stuff and the costumes, but where were those people when we needed help? Nowhere. It was only Curtis.”
Sally Burton rounds out the three, referred to collectively by the media as “The Maidens of America’s MIdnight.” “Like, the whole 50s aesthetic is dope,” says Sally. “Curtis was always talking about family. Well family is so overrated, I just want a place where I can like, express myself and be happy.” Sally isn’t as forward as the the other two; she dances around her story. You get a sense she didn’t interface well with normal life. It’s interesting that the others accept her — Sally is the reason it all fell apart.
The missing centerpiece of this family is the infamous Curtis Cant. When I asked the women who he was to them they all used the same title: “Father”. Sally rolled her eyes when she said it, but she said it nonetheless. Curtis’s father, Danny, rolled his eyes as well. “It’s still so strange to me he would use that word,” Danny says. “I always thought he hated me, even as a little kid. He was always so open and loving to his mother, but around me he just shut down. But I know why. I saw him for what he was, and I don't think he has any use for anyone that knows he's lying every goddamned minute of the day.”
In 2015, Curtis got three years in San Quentin for extortion, pandering, and kidnapping, and when he got out he had a decent inheritance from his mother waiting for him. He put all of it into a medium-sized condo in Calabasas that he bought from an elderly couple right before the collapse. The house looks like a time capsule from the Cold War era; none of the maidens who still reside there know if Curtis redesigned it that way or bought it like that. Regardless, it became the iconic visual setting of the family.
After the collapse, Curtis started inviting women from the shelters to live with him. As Janice mentioned, many women were coming and going, and Melinda’s claim that she was first contradicts other accounts. At one point, I was told, upwards of 30 women were staying in the house. “The shelters were frightening,” Janice recounts. “There were so many people, sexual assault and drug use was everywhere. It was a really bad time. I practically jumped into Curtis’ arms when he chose me. The fact that they took our father away is proof that he was right. It’s the system that’s wrong, only family matters.”
Melinda Hall (left) Janice Mayfield (center) Sally Burton (right) Curtis Cant (front)
(CONT)
In March of 2019, Sally showed up on her own; she was 15 at the time. Her father hired an investigator to find her, and he reported his investigation to Bastion. What followed was an all-you-can-eat buffet for the media outlets: A 15-year-old found in a house with a bunch of women dressed up in clothes from the 50’s, all calling an ex-con “father”. Curtis Cant was immediately taken into custody and from there vanished without a trace.
As the country begins to heal so do the last three women living in the house, each claiming she is bearing Curtis’ child. Sally says she's not entirely sure, but she's hopeful. It's clear they all love and look after each other like a family. “He’s coming back, he tells all of us in our dreams,” says Melinda. “Maiden is such a patriarchal word; I hate that word. The media paints us as these weak, sheep girls, victimized by a cult. I was weak when I was hosting dinner parties for the people that broke this country, that’s what a cult looks like. Now I’m powerful. We’re not maidens, we’re fucking Matriarchs!”
Booth, John W. Death of the American Narrative. 2nd ed., Cambridge, MA.
Harvard University Press, 2022.
Death of the American Narrative
The body of America died in 2018 when its economy collapsed. A country can not persist without its lifeblood — the currency that flows in and out of its many streets and waterways. R.I.P. United States of America, 1776 - 2018. But the country’s soul was in jeopardy long before its body gave up the ghost. The soul of a country can not be quantified by its GDP, but must be sustained by its narrative, the purpose and the story that define it.
For America, this story began as it was beget, in an exodus from Britain’s oppression, across the Atlantic and into the dignity of self-authorship. Over time, this literal narrative transformed into a metaphor that permeated even the minutiae of American life. Americans told themselves that, by owning your own business, leaving a bad marriage, even winning the lottery, one might rise out of oppression.
For centuries, this story moved us collectively forward, bolstered by three founding ideals:. Democracy, which tells us “everyone has a voice;” Capitalism, which says, “everyone has a chance;” and Judeo-Christian values, which preach, “everyone receives justice.” These ideals pretend to level the playing field, but how can such concepts be interpreted in view of decades of disillusionment? Do we and can we still believe it?
As the functions of democracy were exposed, the story evaporated. When Senator McCarthy televised his blacklist trials, Marxism flourished in the universities. Nightly coverage of the Vietnam War spread uncertainty, even among the moderate American family, regarding the intentions of the government. News coverage that emphasized profitability over integrity discovered failure was more compelling (and sold better) than success. Every corporate criminal that walks and every innocent, impoverished, African-American murdered by the police, chips away at who we think we are.
We’ve eaten from the tree of knowledge and now we know how naked and vulnerable we are. Our country faces a tragic conundrum. The freedom and accessibility of our information prevents a return to blissful ignorance, but still we must have a soul. We have been a technocratic corporatocracy, for better or worse, for decades. The corporate edict of infinite growth is now our story, and we, as individuals, are obligated to strive toward greatness. If the Narrative of the U.S.A. was the American Dream, the Narrative of the Commonwealth will be a people coming together to unlock all our infinite human potential and move forward in unison.
Re-Branding the Revolution
Thomas Quinn, CE News
Washington, D.C. — On Friday, half a million protesters from all over the country assembled here to march against the newly instated Commonwealth. Primarily made up of young women, many 15 years of age, the event felt more like a carnival than a protest. Balloons outnumbered picket signs, chants gave way to songs, and girls wearing face paint shouted “We want our brand back!” The protest was arranged by FEED influencer and Republik immigrant Misa Kitano, whose digital influence spans tens of millions.
On the day the Commonwealth took control, Kitano posted a question to her FEED: “Who owns me now?” FEED is owned by Evoke, which is a part of the bigger mega-corporation, The Commonwealth — which was suddenly running the country. “I know being owned by a corporation isn’t ideal and comes with complications, but I agreed to them,” she said in an interview prior to the march. To her, this was part of building a new life, away from the Republik and its authoritarianism. “But my brand is owned by the new government now, and I never agreed to that.” Like everything she does, Kitano’s campaign seems precisely timed to the zeitgeist: With the United States’ judicial branch hanging on as the last connection to that erstwhile government and the constitutional convention still underway, freedom of speech is currently in flux. Kitano understands this, and her celebrity gives her both the platform and motive to lead this particular fight.
Misa Kitano
@MisaKitano
Who owns me now?
Kitano, 22, was a regional celebrity in Japan before the unification of the Republik. She lip synced at fashion shows and corporate events and entered idol competitions. “Things changed in Japan almost overnight,” she said. “I always chose my setlist — fun, poppy stuff like Beyonce´ — but out of nowhere I started being handed traditional Chinese songs. Nobody said I had to do them, but they kind of implied it.” She gained her American following after hosting a FEED Q&A when she fled the Republik with her father using falsified documents.
The march is colorful and positive, a stark contrast to the violence that broke out when the Freeloader Rights Movement rallied in the same location five years ago. But to some, especially those from a generation that still clings to the American Dream, Kitano’s popularity, and the movement she is heading, is mystifying. Clara Stack, who organized the Freeloader Rights march, sees it as a farce. “Sadly, change only comes by way of blood and sacrifice, otherwise no one will pay attention,” she says. But more people are paying attention — the D.C. march alone is five times larger than the Freeloader Rights event, and related protests in other cities nearly double the total attendance.
Blue lip gloss and blonde braided pigtails, eschewing any particular style but inventing one that blends high fashion with the mundane, Kitano may appear on any day with copious accessories or none at all; in a baggy, frumpy-but-expensive crew-neck logo sweatshirt or a tailored fur jacket.
(CONT)
In the late evening on this warm day in June, she took the stage in tight jean overalls and a loose red hoodie which neither obscured nor glorified her non-traditional appearance.
Before she sang, she gave a speech that encapsulates the new movement perfectly. “Branding isn’t just about selling yourself, it’s buying yourself back from a system that thinks it can own you,” she said. “In a country run by a corporation, your brand is who you are, and we can’t let them take that. I will not have my identity stolen again by any authority”.
More than just a rallying cry, more than a protest about corporate ethics, Kitano’s speech turned the focus to constitutional freedom. Her appearance, her syntax, her youth may prevent an older generation from realizing what she is doing, but the younger one hears her, taking a new country for what it is and doing their best to color it the way they want it, whether anyone understands or not.
Eclipse Capital Management
Letter to my clients
I write to you today not to gloat. It would be wildly inappropriate to brag about the success of our hedge fund while devastation rains down around us. Instead, I write to resign, and as an attempt to impart some insight while this platform allows me such indulgences. Like any smart gambler, I’m walking away from the table while I can. And make no mistake, that is what we are: We may wear tailored suits, drink expensive wine, and drive fast cars, but we are degenerate gamblers.
You have seen your purchasing power fall, even as you’ve worked toward a better life, and you’ve wondered why you can’t retire, or can no longer afford your cancer medication. Allow me to draw back the curtain. What we have is a question of chemical dependency, and it is as addictive as any drug. If you must ask "How much money does any one person need?” you fundamentally misunderstand this system. Money becomes an abstract number — when it goes up you’re happy, when it goes down you get sad.
As a short trader my job was to discover fraud. That’s when you push your chips in because that company will be found out and that company will fail. I chose a short position on the whole system because the whole thing is broken. That’s no surprise to anyone of course, but the extent of it would shock just about anyone. The amount of legislation designed to prevent catastrophes like this that instead was blocked by special interest groups would make your stomach turn. It did mine, though not so much that I didn’t place my bets. But here’s the thing: It’s just going to happen again and again. The board will be reset, the players may change, but it’s not anything noble. It’s just more addicts, just trying to get their fix.
So I'm getting out, not because it's cruel, but because it's boring. The same old white men are playing the same game ad infinitum, and I’ve already won. Its contrived. If you saw it in a movie you’d roll your eyes. I learned mathematics to better understand the complexity of the universe, not the inane repetition of a washed-up economic paradigm. There’s a big new challenge out there, full of intricacy and intrigue, for those that are clever enough to spot it. Markets are small, but humans are big. Some things are still mysterious. May you be as fortunate in your search as I.
Mariam Sadir
Dear Karen,
There is no easy way to say this. I’m leaving. Throughout my military career there have been many goodbyes, but this will be the last of them. You know better than anyone that if I’m doing something, there’s a damn good reason for it. I won’t apologize. But I’ll try to explain myself. I owe you that.
All my life, all I ever wanted to do was save the world. My father enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor. I was 8, and it's all anyone in town ever talked about to me. No matter what I accomplished, it would always be compared to him leaving us for a higher purpose. My mother had an altar to him that you could see as soon as you walked in the door. Dying in battle might be the closest a man can come to godhood.
In Korea, I got my first taste of it, what war was, what it looked and smelled like. It was anticlimactic. It didn't look how I imagined it would, like the stories the old men at the lodge used to tell. Vietnam wasn't much better, and the intelligence service is a bureaucratic wasteland. I loved the time we shared, but I think you always suspected my heart and mind were somewhere else. Regardless, you stood by me dutifully, which shows more courage than I've ever had.
Yesterday America was attacked. This is my Pearl Harbor, and as abhorrent as it sounds, I've never felt more purpose in my life. I know we talked about me retiring in a year or two, but I can't do that now. The bureaucrats are scared, and that's when the soldiers get to do what needs to be done. I've been preparing for this my whole life and I can't let anyone get in the way of that, even someone who has stood by me for 48 years. I know as my wife you will forgive me, but as my best friend, you will hate me. This is my calling, my war, and my last chance to live up to the standard I have set for myself, like my father did before me.
Sincerely Yours,
Dylan
The Matriarchs of America’s Midnight
June Nguyen, CE News
Melinda Hall credits herself as being the first. Her husband, Terrance Hall, worked on K street in 2017, and she’s always referred to herself as a socialite by trade. A week after the 2018 crash, Terrance hung himself in their garage with an extension cord. Melinda talks about it like she’s discussing what she had for dinner last night. “After Terrance, I was broken, but now I’m whole,” she tells me. “I wouldn’t go back to that empty life for anything in the world. I didn’t know what happiness was until I found Curtis.”
Janice Mayfield can’t remember if she was the third or fourth member to come to the family. “Girls were coming in and out all the time,” she says. “Some women lack discipline. Curtis ran a strict household, and some girls were trying to get clean and just ... didn’t make it.” Janice had just started a hair salon with a high-interest bank loan when the collapse hit. “When you start a business you’re already vulnerable. Then something like that happens and you don’t even have a chance.” The domino effect that she describes is terrifying. Couldn’t pay off the loan, the bank took the house, welfare shut down, homeless shelter filled to capacity and extremely dangerous. “I know how we look to people with the sex stuff and the costumes, but where were those people when we needed help? Nowhere. It was only Curtis.”
Sally Burton rounds out the three, referred to collectively by the media as “The Maidens of America’s MIdnight.” “Like, the whole 50s aesthetic is dope,” says Sally. “Curtis was always talking about family. Well family is so overrated, I just want a place where I can like, express myself and be happy.” Sally isn’t as forward as the the other two; she dances around her story. You get a sense she didn’t interface well with normal life. It’s interesting that the others accept her — Sally is the reason it all fell apart.
The missing centerpiece of this family is the infamous Curtis Cant. When I asked the women who he was to them they all used the same title: “Father”. Sally rolled her eyes when she said it, but she said it nonetheless. Curtis’s father, Danny, rolled his eyes as well. “It’s still so strange to me he would use that word,” Danny says. “I always thought he hated me, even as a little kid. He was always so open and loving to his mother, but around me he just shut down. But I know why. I saw him for what he was, and I don't think he has any use for anyone that knows he's lying every goddamned minute of the day.”
In 2015, Curtis got three years in San Quentin for extortion, pandering, and kidnapping, and when he got out he had a decent inheritance from his mother waiting for him. He put all of it into a medium-sized condo in Calabasas that he bought from an elderly couple right before the collapse. The house looks like a time capsule from the Cold War era; none of the maidens who still reside there know if Curtis redesigned it that way or bought it like that. Regardless, it became the iconic visual setting of the family.
After the collapse, Curtis started inviting women from the shelters to live with him. As Janice mentioned, many women were coming and going, and Melinda’s claim that she was first contradicts other accounts. At one point, I was told, upwards of 30 women were staying in the house. “The shelters were frightening,” Janice recounts. “There were so many people, sexual assault and drug use was everywhere. It was a really bad time. I practically jumped into Curtis’ arms when he chose me. The fact that they took our father away is proof that he was right. It’s the system that’s wrong, only family matters.”
Melinda Hall (left) Janice Mayfield (center) Sally Burton (right) Curtis Cant (front)
(CONT)
In March of 2019, Sally showed up on her own; she was 15 at the time. Her father hired an investigator to find her, and he reported his investigation to Bastion. What followed was an all-you-can-eat buffet for the media outlets: A 15-year-old found in a house with a bunch of women dressed up in clothes from the 50’s, all calling an ex-con “father”. Curtis Cant was immediately taken into custody and from there vanished without a trace.
As the country begins to heal so do the last three women living in the house, each claiming she is bearing Curtis’ child. Sally says she's not entirely sure, but she's hopeful. It's clear they all love and look after each other like a family. “He’s coming back, he tells all of us in our dreams,” says Melinda. “Maiden is such a patriarchal word; I hate that word. The media paints us as these weak, sheep girls, victimized by a cult. I was weak when I was hosting dinner parties for the people that broke this country, that’s what a cult looks like. Now I’m powerful. We’re not maidens, we’re fucking Matriarchs!”
Booth, John W. Death of the American Narrative. 2nd ed., Cambridge,
MA. Harvard University Press, 2022.
Death of the American Narrative
The body of America died in 2018 when its economy collapsed. A country can not persist without its lifeblood — the currency that flows in and out of its many streets and waterways. R.I.P. United States of America, 1776 - 2018. But the country’s soul was in jeopardy long before its body gave up the ghost. The soul of a country can not be quantified by its GDP, but must be sustained by its narrative, the purpose and the story that define it.
For America, this story began as it was beget, in an exodus from Britain’s oppression, across the Atlantic and into the dignity of self-authorship. Over time, this literal narrative transformed into a metaphor that permeated even the minutiae of American life. Americans told themselves that, by owning your own business, leaving a bad marriage, even winning the lottery, one might rise out of oppression.
For centuries, this story moved us collectively forward, bolstered by three founding ideals:. Democracy, which tells us “everyone has a voice;” Capitalism, which says, “everyone has a chance;” and Judeo-Christian values, which preach, “everyone receives justice.” These ideals pretend to level the playing field, but how can such concepts be interpreted in view of decades of disillusionment? Do we and can we still believe it?
As the functions of democracy were exposed, the story evaporated. When Senator McCarthy televised his blacklist trials, Marxism flourished in the universities. Nightly coverage of the Vietnam War spread uncertainty, even among the moderate American family, regarding the intentions of the government. News coverage that emphasized profitability over integrity discovered failure was more compelling (and sold better) than success. Every corporate criminal that walks and every innocent, impoverished, African-American murdered by the police, chips away at who we think we are.
We’ve eaten from the tree of knowledge and now we know how naked and vulnerable we are. Our country faces a tragic conundrum. The freedom and accessibility of our information prevents a return to blissful ignorance, but still we must have a soul. We have been a technocratic corporatocracy, for better or worse, for decades. The corporate edict of infinite growth is now our story, and we, as individuals, are obligated to strive toward greatness. If the Narrative of the U.S.A. was the American Dream, the Narrative of the Commonwealth will be a people coming together to unlock all our infinite human potential and move forward in unison.
Re-Branding the Revolution
Thomas Quinn, CE News
Washington, D.C. — On Friday, half a million protesters from all over the country assembled here to march against the newly instated Commonwealth. Primarily made up of young women, many 15 years of age, the event felt more like a carnival than a protest. Balloons outnumbered picket signs, chants gave way to songs, and girls wearing face paint shouted “We want our brand back!” The protest was arranged by FEED influencer and Republik immigrant Misa Kitano, whose digital influence spans tens of millions.
On the day the Commonwealth took control, Kitano posted a question to her FEED: “Who owns me now?” FEED is owned by Evoke which is a part of the bigger mega-corporation, The Commonwealth — which was suddenly running the country. “I know being owned by a corporation isn’t ideal and comes with complications, but I agreed to them,” she said in an interview prior to the march. To her, this was part of building a new life, away from the Republik and its authoritarianism. “But my brand is owned by the new government now, and I never agreed to that.” Like everything she does, Kitano’s campaign seems precisely timed to the zeitgeist: With the United States’ judicial branch hanging on as the last connection to that erstwhile government and the constitutional convention still underway, freedom of speech is currently in flux. Kitano understands this, and her celebrity gives her both the platform and motive to lead this particular fight.
Misa Kitano
@MisaKitano
Who owns me now?
Kitano, 22, was a regional celebrity in Japan before the unification of the Republik. She lip synced at fashion shows and corporate events and entered idol competitions. “Things changed in Japan almost overnight,” she said. “I always chose my setlist — fun, poppy stuff like Beyonce´ — but out of nowhere I started being handed traditional Chinese songs. Nobody said I had to do them, but they kind of implied it.” She gained her American following after hosting a FEED Q&A when she fled the Republik with her father using falsified documents.
The march is colorful and positive, a stark contrast to the violence that broke out when the Freeloader Rights Movement rallied in the same location five years ago. But to some, especially those from a generation that still clings to the American Dream, Kitano’s popularity, and the movement she is heading, is mystifying. Clara Stack, who organized the Freeloader Rights march, sees it as a farce. “Sadly, change only comes by way of blood and sacrifice, otherwise no one will pay attention,” she says. But more people are paying attention — the D.C. march alone is five times larger than the Freeloader Rights event, and related protests in other cities nearly double the total attendance.
Blue lip gloss and blonde braided pigtails, eschewing any particular style but inventing one that blends high fashion with the mundane,
(CONT)
Kitano may appear on any day with copious accessories or none at all; in a baggy, frumpy-but-expensive crew-neck logo sweatshirt or a tailored fur jacket. In the late evening on this warm day in June, she took the stage in tight jean overalls and a loose red hoodie which neither obscured nor glorified her non-traditional appearance.
Before she sang, she gave a speech that encapsulates the new movement perfectly. “Branding isn’t just about selling yourself, it’s buying yourself back from a system that thinks it can own you,” she said. “In a country run by a corporation, your brand is who you are, and we can’t let them take that. I will not have my identity stolen again by any authority”.
More than just a rallying cry, more than a protest about corporate ethics, Kitano’s speech turned the focus to constitutional freedom. Her appearance, her syntax, her youth may prevent an older generation from realizing what she is doing, but the younger one hears her, taking a new country for what it is and doing their best to color it the way they want it, whether anyone understands or not.
Eclipse Capital Management
Letter to my clients
I write to you today not to gloat. It would be wildly inappropriate to brag about the success of our hedge fund while devastation rains down around us. Instead, I write to resign, and as an attempt to impart some insight while this platform allows me such indulgences. Like any smart gambler, I’m walking away from the table while I can. And make no mistake, that is what we are: We may wear tailored suits, drink expensive wine, and drive fast cars, but we are degenerate gamblers.
You have seen your purchasing power fall, even as you’ve worked toward a better life, and you’ve wondered why you can’t retire, or can no longer afford your cancer medication. Allow me to draw back the curtain. What we have is a question of chemical dependency, and it is as addictive as any drug. If you must ask "How much money does any one person need?” you fundamentally misunderstand this system. Money becomes an abstract number — when it goes up you’re happy, when it goes down you get sad.
As a short trader my job was to discover fraud. That’s when you push your chips in because that company will be found out and that company will fail. I chose a short position on the whole system because the whole thing is broken. That’s no surprise to anyone of course, but the extent of it would shock just about anyone. The amount of legislation designed to prevent catastrophes like this that instead was blocked by special interest groups would make your stomach turn. It did mine, though not so much that I didn’t place my bets. But here’s the thing: It’s just going to happen again and again. The board will be reset, the players may change, but it’s not anything noble. It’s just more addicts, just trying to get their fix.
So I'm getting out, not because it's cruel, but because it's boring. The same old white men are playing the same game ad infinitum, and I’ve already won. Its contrived. If you saw it in a movie you’d roll your eyes. I learned mathematics to better understand the complexity of the universe, not the inane repetition of a washed-up economic paradigm. There’s a big new challenge out there, full of intricacy and intrigue, for those that are clever enough to spot it. Markets are small, but humans are big. Some things are still mysterious. May you be as fortunate in your search as I.
Mariam Sadir
Dear Karen,
There is no easy way to say this. I’m leaving. Throughout my military career there have been many goodbyes, but this will be the last of them. You know better than anyone that if I’m doing something, there’s a damn good reason for it. I won’t apologize. But I’ll try to explain myself. I owe you that.
All my life, all I ever wanted to do was save the world. My father enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor. I was 8, and it's all anyone in town ever talked about to me. No matter what I accomplished, it would always be compared to him leaving us for a higher purpose. My mother had an altar to him that you could see as soon as you walked in the door. Dying in battle might be the closest a man can come to godhood.
In Korea, I got my first taste of it, what war was, what it looked and smelled like. It was anticlimactic. It didn't look how I imagined it would, like the stories the old men at the lodge used to tell. Vietnam wasn't much better, and the intelligence service is a bureaucratic wasteland. I loved the time we shared, but I think you always suspected my heart and mind were somewhere else. Regardless, you stood by me dutifully, which shows more courage than I've ever had.
Yesterday America was attacked. This is my Pearl Harbor, and as abhorrent as it sounds, I've never felt more purpose in my life. I know we talked about me retiring in a year or two, but I can't do that now. The bureaucrats are scared, and that's when the soldiers get to do what needs to be done. I've been preparing for this my whole life and I can't let anyone get in the way of that, even someone who has stood by me for 48 years. I know as my wife you will forgive me, but as my best friend, you will hate me. This is my calling, my war, and my last chance to live up to the standard I have set for myself, like my father did before me.
Sincerely Yours,
Dylan
The Matriarchs of America’s Midnight
June Nguyen, CE News
Melinda Hall (left) Janice Mayfield (center) Sally Burton (right) Curtis Cant (front)
Melinda Hall credits herself as being the first. Her husband, Terrance Hall, worked on K street in 2017, and she’s always referred to herself as a socialite by trade. A week after the 2018 crash, Terrance hung himself in their garage with an extension cord. Melinda talks about it like she’s discussing what she had for dinner last night. “After Terrance, I was broken, but now I’m whole,” she tells me. “I wouldn’t go back to that empty life for anything in the world. I didn’t know what happiness was until I found Curtis.”
Janice Mayfield can’t remember if she was the third or fourth member to come to the family. “Girls were coming in and out all the time,” she says. “Some women lack discipline. Curtis ran a strict household, and some girls were trying to get clean and just ... didn’t make it.” Janice had just started a hair salon with a high-interest bank loan when the collapse hit. “When you start a business you’re already vulnerable. Then something like that happens and you don’t even have a chance.” The domino effect that she describes is terrifying. Couldn’t pay off the loan, the bank took the house, welfare shut down, homeless shelter filled to capacity and extremely dangerous. “I know how we look to people with the sex stuff and the costumes, but where were those people when we needed help? Nowhere. It was only Curtis.”
Sally Burton rounds out the three, referred to collectively by the media as “The Maidens of America’s MIdnight.” “Like, the whole 50s aesthetic is dope,” says Sally. “Curtis was always talking about family. Well family is so overrated, I just want a place where I can like, express myself and be happy.” Sally isn’t as forward as the the other two; she dances around her story. You get a sense she didn’t interface well with normal life. It’s interesting that the others accept her — Sally is the reason it all fell apart.
The missing centerpiece of this family is the infamous Curtis Cant. When I asked the women who he was to them they all used the same title: “Father”. Sally rolled her eyes when she said it, but she said it nonetheless. Curtis’s father, Danny, rolled his eyes as well. “It’s still so strange to me he would use that word,” Danny says. “I always thought he hated me, even as a little kid. He was always so open and loving to his mother, but around me he just shut down. But I know why. I saw him for what he was, and I don't think he has any use for anyone that knows he's lying every goddamned minute of the day.”
In 2015, Curtis got three years in San Quentin for extortion, pandering, and kidnapping, and when he got out he had a decent inheritance from his mother waiting for him. He put all of it into a medium-sized condo in Calabasas that he bought from an elderly couple right before the collapse. The house looks like a time capsule from the Cold War era; none of the maidens who still reside there know if Curtis redesigned it that way or bought it like that. Regardless, it became the iconic visual setting of the family.
After the collapse, Curtis started inviting women from the shelters to live with him. As Janice mentioned, many women were coming and going, and Melinda’s claim that she was first contradicts other accounts. At one point, I was told, upwards of 30 women were staying in the house. “The shelters were frightening,” Janice recounts. “There were so many people, sexual assault and drug use was everywhere. It was a really bad time. I practically jumped into Curtis’ arms when he chose me. The fact that they took our father away is proof that he was right. It’s the system that’s wrong, only family matters.”
In March of 2019, Sally showed up on her own; she was 15 at the time. Her father hired an investigator to find her, and he reported his investigation to Bastion. What followed was an all-you-can-eat buffet for the media outlets: A 15-year-old found in a house with a bunch of women dressed up in clothes from the 50’s, all calling an ex-con “father”. Curtis Cant was immediately taken into custody and from there vanished without a trace.
As the country begins to heal so do the last three women living in the house, each claiming she is bearing Curtis’ child. Sally says she's not entirely sure, but she's hopeful. It's clear they all love and look after each other like a family. “He’s coming back, he tells all of us in our dreams,” says Melinda. “Maiden is such a patriarchal word; I hate that word. The media paints us as these weak, sheep girls, victimized by a cult. I was weak when I was hosting dinner parties for the people that broke this country, that’s what a cult looks like. Now I’m powerful. We’re not maidens, we’re fucking Matriarchs!”
Death of the American Narrative
Booth, John W. Death of the American Narrative. 2nd ed., Cambridge,
MA. Harvard University Press, 2022.
The body of America died in 2018 when its economy collapsed. A country can not persist without its lifeblood — the currency that flows in and out of its many streets and waterways. R.I.P. United States of America, 1776 - 2018. But the country’s soul was in jeopardy long before its body gave up the ghost. The soul of a country can not be quantified by its GDP, but must be sustained by its narrative, the purpose and the story that define it.
For America, this story began as it was beget, in an exodus from Britain’s oppression, across the Atlantic and into the dignity of self-authorship. Over time, this literal narrative transformed into a metaphor that permeated even the minutiae of American life. Americans told themselves that, by owning your own business, leaving a bad marriage, even winning the lottery, one might rise out of oppression.
For centuries, this story moved us collectively forward, bolstered by three founding ideals:. Democracy, which tells us “everyone has a voice;” Capitalism, which says, “everyone has a chance;” and Judeo-Christian values, which preach, “everyone receives justice.” These ideals pretend to level the playing field, but how can such concepts be interpreted in view of decades of disillusionment? Do we and can we still believe it?
As the functions of democracy were exposed, the story evaporated. When Senator McCarthy televised his blacklist trials, Marxism flourished in the universities. Nightly coverage of the Vietnam War spread uncertainty, even among the moderate American family, regarding the intentions of the government. News coverage that emphasized profitability over integrity discovered failure was more compelling (and sold better) than success. Every corporate criminal that walks and every innocent, impoverished, African-American murdered by the police, chips away at who we think we are.
We’ve eaten from the tree of knowledge and now we know how naked and vulnerable we are. Our country faces a tragic conundrum. The freedom and accessibility of our information prevents a return to blissful ignorance, but still we must have a soul. We have been a technocratic corporatocracy, for better or worse, for decades. The corporate edict of infinite growth is now our story, and we, as individuals, are obligated to strive toward greatness. If the Narrative of the U.S.A. was the American Dream, the Narrative of the Commonwealth will be a people coming together to unlock all our infinite human potential and move forward in unison.
Re-branding the Revolution
Thomas Quinn, CE News
Washington, D.C. — On Friday, half a million protesters from all over the country assembled here to march against the newly instated Commonwealth. Primarily made up of young women, many 15 years of age, the event felt more like a carnival than a protest. Balloons outnumbered picket signs, chants gave way to songs, and girls wearing face paint shouted “We want our brand back!” The protest was arranged by FEED influencer and Republik immigrant Misa Kitano, whose digital influence spans tens of millions.
On the day the Commonwealth took control, Kitano posted a question to her FEED: “Who owns me now?” FEED is owned by, Evoke which is a part of the bigger mega-corporation, The Commonwealth — which was suddenly running the country. “I know being owned by a corporation isn’t ideal and comes with complications, but I agreed to them,” she said in an interview prior to the march. To her, this was part of building a new life, away from the Republik and its authoritarianism. “But my brand is owned by the new government now, and I never agreed to that.” Like everything she does, Kitano’s campaign seems precisely timed to the zeitgeist: With the United States’ judicial branch hanging on as the last connection to that erstwhile government and the constitutional convention still underway, freedom of speech is currently in flux. Kitano understands this, and her celebrity gives her both the platform and motive to lead this particular fight.
Misa Kitano
@MisaKitano
Who owns me now?
Kitano, 22, was a regional celebrity in Japan before the unification of the Republik. She lip synced at fashion shows and corporate events and entered idol competitions. “Things changed in Japan almost overnight,” she said. “I always chose my setlist — fun, poppy stuff like Beyonce´ — but out of nowhere I started being handed traditional Chinese songs. Nobody said I had to do them, but they kind of implied it.” She gained her American following after hosting a FEED Q&A when she fled the Republik with her father using falsified documents.
The march is colorful and positive, a stark contrast to the violence that broke out when the Freeloader Rights Movement rallied in the same location five years ago. But to some, especially those from a generation that still clings to the American Dream, Kitano’s popularity, and the movement she is heading, is mystifying. Clara Stack, who organized the Freeloader Rights march, sees it as a farce. “Sadly, change only comes by way of blood and sacrifice, otherwise no one will pay attention,” she says. But more people are paying attention — the D.C. march alone is five times larger than the Freeloader Rights event, and related protests in other cities nearly double the total attendance.
Blue lip gloss and blonde braided pigtails, eschewing any particular style but inventing one that blends high fashion with the mundane, Kitano may appear on any day with copious accessories or none at all; in a baggy, frumpy-but-expensive crew-neck logo sweatshirt or a tailored fur jacket. In the late evening on this warm day in June, she took the stage in tight jean overalls and a loose red hoodie which neither obscured nor glorified her non-traditional appearance.
Before she sang, she gave a speech that encapsulates the new movement perfectly. “Branding isn’t just about selling yourself, it’s buying yourself back from a system that thinks it can own you,” she said. “In a country run by a corporation, your brand is who you are, and we can’t let them take that. I will not have my identity stolen again by any authority”.
More than just a rallying cry, more than a protest about corporate ethics, Kitano’s speech turned the focus to constitutional freedom. Her appearance, her syntax, her youth may prevent an older generation from realizing what she is doing, but the younger one hears her, taking a new country for what it is and doing their best to color it the way they want it, whether anyone understands or not.
Eclipse Capital Management
Letter to my clients
I write to you today not to gloat. It would be wildly inappropriate to brag about the success of our hedge fund while devastation rains down around us. Instead, I write to resign, and as an attempt to impart some insight while this platform allows me such indulgences. Like any smart gambler, I’m walking away from the table while I can. And make no mistake, that is what we are: We may wear tailored suits, drink expensive wine, and drive fast cars, but we are degenerate gamblers.
You have seen your purchasing power fall, even as you’ve worked toward a better life, and you’ve wondered why you can’t retire, or can no longer afford your cancer medication. Allow me to draw back the curtain. What we have is a question of chemical dependency, and it is as addictive as any drug. If you must ask "How much money does any one person need?” you fundamentally misunderstand this system. Money becomes an abstract number — when it goes up you’re happy, when it goes down you get sad.
As a short trader my job was to discover fraud. That’s when you push your chips in because that company will be found out and that company will fail. I chose a short position on the whole system because the whole thing is broken. That’s no surprise to anyone of course, but the extent of it would shock just about anyone. The amount of legislation designed to prevent catastrophes like this that instead was blocked by special interest groups would make your stomach turn. It did mine, though not so much that I didn’t place my bets. But here’s the thing: It’s just going to happen again and again. The board will be reset, the players may change, but it’s not anything noble. It’s just more addicts, just trying to get their fix.
So I'm getting out, not because it's cruel, but because it's boring. The same old white men are playing the same game ad infinitum, and I’ve already won. Its contrived. If you saw it in a movie you’d roll your eyes. I learned mathematics to better understand the complexity of the universe, not the inane repetition of a washed-up economic paradigm. There’s a big new challenge out there, full of intricacy and intrigue, for those that are clever enough to spot it. Markets are small, but humans are big. Some things are still mysterious. May you be as fortunate in your search as I.
Mariam Sadir
Dear Karen,
There is no easy way to say this. I’m leaving. Throughout my military career there have been many goodbyes, but this will be the last of them. You know better than anyone that if I’m doing something, there’s a damn good reason for it. I won’t apologize. But I’ll try to explain myself. I owe you that.
All my life, all I ever wanted to do was save the world. My father enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor. I was 8, and it's all anyone in town ever talked about to me. No matter what I accomplished, it would always be compared to him leaving us for a higher purpose. My mother had an altar to him that you could see as soon as you walked in the door. Dying in battle might be the closest a man can come to godhood.
In Korea, I got my first taste of it, what war was, what it looked and smelled like. It was anticlimactic. It didn't look how I imagined it would, like the stories the old men at the lodge used to tell. Vietnam wasn't much better, and the intelligence service is a bureaucratic wasteland. I loved the time we shared, but I think you always suspected my heart and mind were somewhere else. Regardless, you stood by me dutifully, which shows more courage than I've ever had.
Yesterday America was attacked. This is my Pearl Harbor, and as abhorrent as it sounds, I've never felt more purpose in my life. I know we talked about me retiring in a year or two, but I can't do that now. The bureaucrats are scared, and that's when the soldiers get to do what needs to be done. I've been preparing for this my whole life and I can't let anyone get in the way of that, even someone who has stood by me for 48 years. I know as my wife you will forgive me, but as my best friend, you will hate me. This is my calling, my war, and my last chance to live up to the standard I have set for myself, like my father did before me.
Sincerely Yours,
Dylan
The Matriarchs of America’s Midnight
June Nguyen, CE News
Melinda Hall (left) Janice Mayfield (center) Sally Burton (right) Curtis Cant (front)
Melinda Hall credits herself as being the first. Her husband, Terrance Hall, worked on K street in 2017, and she’s always referred to herself as a socialite by trade. A week after the 2018 crash, Terrance hung himself in their garage with an extension cord. Melinda talks about it like she’s discussing what she had for dinner last night. “After Terrance, I was broken, but now I’m whole,” she tells me. “I wouldn’t go back to that empty life for anything in the world. I didn’t know what happiness was until I found Curtis.”
Janice Mayfield can’t remember if she was the third or fourth member to come to the family. “Girls were coming in and out all the time,” she says. “Some women lack discipline. Curtis ran a strict household, and some girls were trying to get clean and just ... didn’t make it.” Janice had just started a hair salon with a high-interest bank loan when the collapse hit. “When you start a business you’re already vulnerable. Then something like that happens and you don’t even have a chance.” The domino effect that she describes is terrifying. Couldn’t pay off the loan, the bank took the house, welfare shut down, homeless shelter filled to capacity and extremely dangerous. “I know how we look to people with the sex stuff and the costumes, but where were those people when we needed help? Nowhere. It was only Curtis.”
Sally Burton rounds out the three, referred to collectively by the media as “The Maidens of America’s Midnight.” “Like, the whole 50s aesthetic is dope,” says Sally. “Curtis was always talking about family. Well family is so overrated, I just want a place where I can like, express myself and be happy.” Sally isn’t as forward as the the other two; she dances around her story. You get a sense she didn’t interface well with normal life. It’s interesting that the others accept her — Sally is the reason it all fell apart.
The missing centerpiece of this family is the infamous Curtis Cant. When I asked the women who he was to them they all used the same title: “Father”. Sally rolled her eyes when she said it, but she said it nonetheless. Curtis’s father, Danny, rolled his eyes as well. “It’s still so strange to me he would use that word,” Danny says. “I always thought he hated me, even as a little kid. He was always so open and loving to his mother, but around me he just shut down. But I know why. I saw him for what he was, and I don't think he has any use for anyone that knows he's lying every goddamned minute of the day.”
In 2015, Curtis got three years in San Quentin for extortion, pandering, and kidnapping, and when he got out he had a decent inheritance from his mother waiting for him. He put all of it into a medium-sized condo in Calabasas that he bought from an elderly couple right before the collapse. The house looks like a time capsule from the Cold War era; none of the maidens who still reside there know if Curtis redesigned it that way or bought it like that. Regardless, it became the iconic visual setting of the family.
After the collapse, Curtis started inviting women from the shelters to live with him. As Janice mentioned, many women were coming and going, and Melinda’s claim that she was first contradicts other accounts. At one point, I was told, upwards of 30 women were staying in the house. “The shelters were frightening,” Janice recounts. “There were so many people, sexual assault and drug use was everywhere. It was a really bad time. I practically jumped into Curtis’ arms when he chose me. The fact that they took our father away is proof that he was right. It’s the system that’s wrong, only family matters.”
In March of 2019, Sally showed up on her own; she was 15 at the time. Her father hired an investigator to find her, and he reported his investigation to Bastion. What followed was an all-you-can-eat buffet for the media outlets: A 15-year-old found in a house with a bunch of women dressed up in clothes from the 50’s, all calling an ex-con “father”. Curtis Cant was immediately taken into custody and from there vanished without a trace.
As the country begins to heal so do the last three women living in the house, each claiming she is bearing Curtis’ child. Sally says she's not entirely sure, but she's hopeful. It's clear they all love and look after each other like a family. “He’s coming back, he tells all of us in our dreams,” says Melinda. “Maiden is such a patriarchal word; I hate that word. The media paints us as these weak, sheep girls, victimized by a cult. I was weak when I was hosting dinner parties for the people that broke this country, that’s what a cult looks like. Now I’m powerful. We’re not maidens, we’re fucking Matriarchs!”
Death of the American Narrative
Re-Branding the Revolution
Thomas Quinn, CE News
Washington, D.C. — On Friday, half a million protesters from all over the country assembled here to march against the newly instated Commonwealth. Primarily made up of young women, many 15 years of age, the event felt more like a carnival than a protest. Balloons outnumbered picket signs, chants gave way to songs, and girls wearing face paint shouted “We want our brand back!” The protest was arranged by FEED influencer and Republik immigrant Misa Kitano, whose digital influence spans tens of millions.
On the day the Commonwealth took control, Kitano posted a question to her FEED: “Who owns me now?” FEED is owned by Evoke, which is a part of the bigger mega-corporation, The Commonwealth — which was suddenly running the country. “I know being owned by a corporation isn’t ideal and comes with complications, but I agreed to them,” she said in an interview prior to the march. To her, this was part of building a new life, away from the Republik and its authoritarianism. “But my brand is owned by the new government now, and I never agreed to that.” Like everything she does, Kitano’s campaign seems precisely timed to the zeitgeist: With the United States’ judicial branch hanging on as the last connection to that erstwhile government and the constitutional convention still underway, freedom of speech is currently in flux. Kitano understands this, and her celebrity gives her both the platform and motive to lead this particular fight.
Misa Kitano
@MisaKitano
Who owns me now?
Kitano, 22, was a regional celebrity in Japan before the unification of the Republik. She lip synced at fashion shows and corporate events and entered idol competitions. “Things changed in Japan almost overnight,” she said. “I always chose my setlist — fun, poppy stuff like Beyonce´ — but out of nowhere I started being handed traditional Chinese songs. Nobody said I had to do them, but they kind of implied it.” She gained her American following after hosting a FEED Q&A when she fled the Republik with her father using falsified documents.
The march is colorful and positive, a stark contrast to the violence that broke out when the Freeloader Rights Movement rallied in the same location five years ago. But to some, especially those from a generation that still clings to the American Dream, Kitano’s popularity, and the movement she is heading, is mystifying. Clara Stack, who organized the Freeloader Rights march, sees it as a farce. “Sadly, change only comes by way of blood and sacrifice, otherwise no one will pay attention,” she says. But more people are paying attention — the D.C. march alone is five times larger than the Freeloader Rights event, and related protests in other cities nearly double the total attendance.
Blue lip gloss and blonde braided pigtails, eschewing any particular style but inventing one that blends high fashion with the mundane, Kitano may appear on any day with copious accessories or none at all; in a baggy, frumpy-but-expensive crew-neck logo sweatshirt or a tailored fur jacket. In the late evening on this warm day in June, she took the stage in tight jean overalls and a loose red hoodie which neither obscured nor glorified her non-traditional appearance.
Before she sang, she gave a speech that encapsulates the new movement perfectly. “Branding isn’t just about selling yourself, it’s buying yourself back from a system that thinks it can own you,” she said. “In a country run by a corporation, your brand is who you are, and we can’t let them take that. I will not have my identity stolen again by any authority”.
More than just a rallying cry, more than a protest about corporate ethics, Kitano’s speech turned the focus to constitutional freedom. Her appearance, her syntax, her youth may prevent an older generation from realizing what she is doing, but the younger one hears her, taking a new country for what it is and doing their best to color it the way they want it, whether anyone understands or not.