Blain’s Morning Porridge Oct 27^th 2025 – End of the world or another Trump deal? Which is worse?

“So, it’s a f*****g coin toss? That is what we get for 50 billion dollars?”

It is possible to cram Cataclysm, Armageddon and Apocalypse into a single Morning Porridge at the start of a week that promises to be market friendly? Of course it is! There is plenty of stuff to worry about, but when the noise sounds so positive, the herd that is the market will keep on fooling themselves.. The higher they climb, the further there is to fall…

Here is a link to this morning’s Porridge in Podcast Format!

That was an “interesting” weekend. I nearly scared myself to death, and had some disturbing insights as to what comes next…. And then decided…. Relax… just go with the flow. So I went for a swim, a sail, a pint, and a damn fine traditional roast Chicken dinner (winner, winner) with friends – what could possibly go wrong?

First up is this week’s Trump/Xi summit in Seoul. The groundwork is laid, both sides are talking up the “peace in our time” narrative on the trade war. American farmers will sell their soyabean mountain and avoid penury, while Trump and Bessent will hail it as the greatest ever deal in the history of greatest ever deals. Both sides will gloss over the nothingelseness that will accompany it – how China will retain the options over critical rare earths and Trump will never again mention punitive tariffs on the Middle Kingdom again – until he inevitably does. However, this week the market will love it.

Trump threatened. China pushed back. USA Lost and retreats 2 steps. Xi  Wins and China moves forward. That’s basically how history will record it. Trump will spend his time telling everyone what a great deal he did. Xi will continue to expand his power, and China’s position as the dominant trading partner will gain further traction.

Second up is the extraordinary victory of La Libertad Avanza in Argentina. President Javier Milei’s party won 41% of the votes, despite the polls predicting a massive lashback after he was hammered by the Buenos Aires’ Peronistas just last month as a slew of corruption scandals mired his senior team and family. (Par for the course in Argentina.)

Yesterday Milei swung around the 14% deficit in the capital state. Extraordinary indeed. Apparently markets and the IMF had nothing to fear from unhappy Argentine voters – who gave Libertarian austerity and free-market reform and increased share of the mid-term vote, despite some 40% of the population in poverty.

Argentinian voters are cleary not daft. Maybe $40 bln of US support for the Peso and economy helped? Bloomberg quotes Billionaire Bill Ackman: “an important win for democracy, capitalism, and sanity, and a defeat for socialists.” Of course it is. (Pass me a bucket.) Trump said it clearer: If Milei “doesn’t win, we’re gone”.

Third up is the imminent end of the world and everything… last year I read a terrifying book; Nuclear War, A Scenario, by Annie Jacobson. I can’t recommend it highly enough, but it’s brutal, plotting moment by moment how a rogue nuclear attack on the USA would escalate into unavoidable global destruction in moments – not days or hours, but literally over the course of minutes.

The book was likely the inspiration for Netflix’s new film: House of Dynamite, which hit the streaming service on Friday. It has gone straight to No 1 in views. It is the most powerful film about nuclear Armageddon since the grim War Game in the 1960s, or the bleak Threads in the 1980s. We’d forgotten these as relics of the Cold War, when “Duck and Cover” was the prescribed approach to survival. The film warns about our complacency towards how nuclear weapons have proliferated.

House of Dynamite is more shocking and terrifying than either the previous films – a remorseless adrenaline fuelled race towards apocalypse that doesn’t need blood, gore or a nuclear flash – just the absolute certainty that what is happening cannot be stopped.

It’s a clever firm. It plays the same 25 minutes of a fictional July 2025 Washington Morning on a repeating loop viewed from different perspectives. (We know the rough date because one scene is set at the re-enactment of the 162^nd anniversary of Gettysburg.) A rogue missile flashes up on the screen. Everyone assumes it’s just another North Korean test – until suddenly it isn’t. In the first loop we watch as a missile base in Alaska is tasked to shoot it down. In the second we’re focused on how the speed and remorseless pace of events leaves everyone a bystander. By the third.. we know the President (who tell then was a just a telephone voice) is the man facing impossible and irreversible decisions.

House of Dynamite is profoundly unsettling. It will put your stock portfolio and career plans into stark reality.

Cheer up… remember my mantra no 2: “Things are never as bad as we fear, but seldom as good as we hope.”

Fourth up this morning is the comedic relief.

I read the FT’s interview with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant. If you are of the opinion the US economy is heading towards a Trump driven crisis – then the article will strike you as a slow burn repeat of House of Dynamite towards inevitable economic cataclysm. You will probably guess the story is likely to and badly as Bessent’s every diminishing circles trying to keep markets calm are tightening as President Trump destroys the basis of American exceptionalism, dollar advantage, and tech and commercial dominance as the foremost economy. Or you might think Scotty is doing a great job. Many folk do.

It is fair to counter the gloom. Today the economy looks resilient. Tariffs have not destroyed it. There is little recessionary threat. These could all be followed with Yet.

Bessent is aware of market wrath towards bad policy, but he plays the role of being the whisperer explaining it with aplomb. He’s a bit like that girl in the White House mouthing off inanities about Trump’s brilliance in press briefings. Both are smart and clever – but you just know they can’t possibly believe some of the horse that spews from their mouths. Doesn’t matter – in Bessent’s case, it’s what he’s persuading the market to believe that counts.

Let’s try to draw some sense from it all… Despite the apparent leaderless dither of the Democrats, it’s still possible Trump will struggle in next year’s mid-terms, and when he inevitably stands in 2028 (Steve Bannon says he will, and there were Trump 28 hats on display in the Oval Office recently.)

Let’s say the bluff and bluster hasn’t created the economic renaissance Trump has promised electors. Picture a US where even though the economy remains strong, prices continue to rise, and voters are coming to realise prices are higher because they are paying tariffs. And they see the dollar in their pocket worth less, government services in collapse, and they ain’t welcome as tourists elsewhere, as their jobs become less secure as firms cynically use useless AI to justify sackings.

And they look at the Whitehouse and what they see is no longer competency, but Trump, his family, his associates and the hangers on, all making off with millions from cryptos associated with the president, and naked greed and corruption.. Well.. if it doesn’t matter in Argentina, why should it in ‘Merica… and by then… America will be a very different place…

Fifth up are car chargers. 2 months ago we decided to buy a hybrid plug in. We ordered the charger. 2 months later Octopus, British Gas, a couple of contractors have passed it from one to the next.. and now we’re waiting for permission for Scottish Electric (in Hampshire) for it to be fitted. They are processing a “high volume” of applications – so they can’t say when that might be. It means we’re pay a premium rate for their electric while they delay. Just that sound a bit bad practice?

And finally… sixth up is Microsoft Copilot, part of the Bill Gates/WEF conspiracy to take over the world. Copilot is now deeply embedded in Word, on which I write the Morning Porridge. Co-pilot wants to assist me and rewrite the Porridge. It is full of suggestions, offering to rewrite and summarise. It is more annoying than that f*****g paperclip decades ago. Yet, there is no option to turn it off. Neither is there an option to switch off other AI shit, like Otter.ai from trying to record and precis all my Teams calls – and share them with MS Central Command. Anyone got ideas on how we stop this?

I may have to relaunch the Morning Porridge as a Pigeon-Mail service. It will be a hand written daily letter…. delivered by carrier pigeon. Maybe I will stand at the Market Square each morning to deliver it… Or I wait till Quantum Computing comes to send it unbreakable crypto form?

Out of time.. and back to the day job..

Bill Blain

CEO – Windshift Capital

Author – The Morning Porridge

Partner – Shard Capital