Multitudes

The Credit Strategist - February 2025

January opened with devastating fires in Los Angeles and ended with a horrific airplane crash in Washington, D.C. Both events illustrated the limits of human ingenuity in an age that worships technology. While we pray for the victims of these tragedies and their friends and families, we should take a moment to reflect on the limitations of humanity’s control over nature and show humility, kindness, and empathy toward others. And in doing that, we should extend those basic human decencies at all times and to all people regardless of their innate qualities, their station in life, or whether they share our beliefs.

January contained a year’s worth of news even beyond the catastrophes that shattered two of America’s most important cities. Among the most noteworthy were President Trump’s inauguration and the flood of policy announcements that followed; hearings for the president’s cabinet picks; the Supreme Court’s ruling that Tik Tok must be sold and the unveiling of the Stargate project backed by Softbank, Oracle and OpenAI with the improbable $500 billion funding target; the launch of aggressive deportations of illegal immigrants starting with convicted criminals; pardons and commutations of thousands of non-violent (primarily drug-related) offenders by President Biden and violent and non-violent January 6^th offenders by President Trump; firings of senior Justice Department officials by President Trump involved in prosecuting cases against him; buyout offers to all federal government employees; President Trump’s expressions of interest in Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal; a cease fire and hostage deal was reached in Gaza; Trump imposed tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China (higher ones on the former two than the latter); and Chinese AI company DeepSeek’s claim that it built AI systems fully competitive with much more expensive American AI systems at a fraction of the cost. That is an incomplete summary but it highlights how the world changed significantly in just a few weeks.