Unf*cking The Republic
Unf*cking The Republic® (UNFTR) is dedicated to progressive politics, leftist economic theories, and social justice in the United States. Join us for deep dives into socialism, labor rights, climate justice, and the fight against inequality. Whether you're curious about Marxist ideas, modern social movements, or progressive policies, UNFTR delivers thoroughly sourced critiques, analyses, and interviews with the historical context mainstream media won't provide. Subscribe for informative and unabashedly progressive coverage of the leftist political and economic landscape.
(Mis)Anthropic: The Math Ain’t Mathing So Good.
Reuters “leaked” information from the forthcoming Anthropic prospectus and the numbers were pretty brutal. But that isn’t stopping all of Wall Street from lining up to invest in yet another AI company (SpaceX) with no discernible path to profitability. In this episode, Max digs through what we learned from the Reuters release and pairs it with other publicly available information on Anthropic to paint a bleak picture of a five-year old company that loses a ton of money but is somehow asking to be valued at around $2 trillion. Max then leads a philosophical discussion about the future of AI and...
On The Record (10-20-26).
This week we went deep on the structural argument that should underpin everything else—disaster privilege, capitalism as the constant, and why the real battle isn’t between the two parties but between the status quo and something that hasn’t been named loudly enough yet. DSA isn’t the radical fringe; it’s the only thing moving the conversation in the right direction, and the in-between days matter as much as Election Day.
Chapters
Intro: 00:00:45
Housekeeping: 00:01:00
Max Notes: 00:03:13
Resources
F.D Signifier: Fallen Idols: How Black Leaders Fa...
Omnibus (10-18-26).
Max and 99 are back for another round of Omnibus. They cover headlines on the SSI asset trap keeping 7.5 million Americans in poverty and the 2028 Democratic slate. Then they tackle listener emails on what AI utopia actually looks like for the rest of us, using credit rating agencies to stop data center buildouts, and Russ Vought’s post-midterm constitutional endgame. Enjoy!
Chapters
Intro: 00:00:32
Headlines: 00:12:49
Emails: 00:25:20
Memberships: 00:59:09
Outro: 01:00:28
Resources
Ken Klippenstein: Exclusive: How the Military Will Hack the Election
New Republic: This Is the...
Why We’re Still Living in Milton Friedman’s Neoliberal World.
More than 20 years after his death, we’re still living in the neoliberal world Milton Friedman made. The arc of neoliberalism begins in 1947, gathers steam in the 1970s, and reaches its zenith in the 1990s before breaking into a million pieces and forever out of the control of its progenitors. The story of Milton Friedman rises and falls along with it, and it’s a complicated one of ego, ambition and academic notoriety; a confluence of factors and foibles that came to define the modern economic age. This is the story of Milton Friedman, one of the principal architects of t...
Phone A Friend: Francesca Fiorentini of The Bitchuation Room.
The Bitchuation Room’s Francesca Fiorentini returns to UNFTR’s Phone A Friend to break down the midterms, what Democrats need to be focusing on next and how the current leadership isn’t up to the challenges ahead. Progressive politics often finds itself at a crossroads during election cycles. In this conversation, we look at how the establishment handles internal pressure and why the narrative surrounding the midterms remains so contentious. Francesca offers her perspective on the shifting dynamics of the left and what it means for the party base moving forward.
Resources
The Bitchuation Room...
On The Record (10-13-26).
This week we connected some dots that should scare everyone—Russell Vought’s think tank’s 7 step playbook for refusing to seat elected members of Congress, a raid on Ilhan Omar’s home, and Trump name-dropping Vought as someone about to make history. Then we looked at France, where the eurozone’s version of our debt problem is playing out without the escape hatch of a sovereign currency (a useful reminder of exactly what we’d be dealing with if the dollar ever loses its privileged position).
Chapters
Intro: 00:00:38
Quick Takes: 00:01:34
Phone A Frie...
Omnibus (10-12-26).
Max and 99 are back for another round of Omnibus. They hit headlines on what comes after hyperpolitics and whether the DSA becomes a career vehicle or a disciplining force, and the botched Tennessee execution. Then they tackle listener emails on the historical case that federal spending was never tied to tax revenue, what you’d call a hybrid of social democracy and democratic socialism, and the real estate collapse accelerating the credit crunch. Enjoy!
Chapters
Intro: 00:00:35
Headlines: 00:05:33
Emails: 00:33:21
Beyond the Bullshit: 01:01:34
Memberships: 01:19:21
Outro: 01:19:40
Re...
On The Record (10-06-26).
This week we diagnosed the economy as a giant zit—good numbers on the surface, all of it concentrated in AI investment and stock market gains for the top 10%, while wages fall below inflation, consumer confidence hits a 12-year low, and the 10-year Treasury just blew past its 2007 peak. Then we looked at what the pop actually looks like: a private credit unwind that drags the banks with it, a Fed that can’t buy its way out this time, and Scott Bessent left holding the bag. The Buffett Indicator is sitting at 235%. Maybe that’s why he retired...
...
Private Credit: Just Because We’re Not Talking About It Doesn’t Mean It’s Not a Problem.
Private credit headlines have calmed down in recent months. It could be because these debt markets are doing just fine...or it could be because we’re too distracted by wars, exploding bond yields, and gas prices. But just because there haven’t been high-profile bankruptcies like last year’s First Brands or Tricolor doesn’t mean there isn’t trouble brewing in the opaque private credit markets. Consternation about these portfolios is growing: redemption requests are outpacing inflows, reports of massive payment-in-kind adjustments keep surfacing, and credit default swaps on private credit-backed loans are popping up. This crisis may not be...
Omnibus (10-03-26).
Max and 99 are back for another round of Omnibus. They hit headlines on the Paramount-Warner merger as a preview of what oligarchs do when anyone tries to govern them, plastic fusing with coral reefs in a new phenomenon researchers are calling “plasticoral,” and rapid third-country deportations getting the Supreme Court’s temporary blessing. Then they tackle listener emails on whether this era is an aberration or just capitalism unmasked, DSA overreach and the pace of the left, and the real arguments against raising corporate taxes.
Chapters
Intro: 00:01:02
Headlines: 00:24:06
Emails: 00:34:33
Member...
On The Record (09-29-26).
Despite only having between 95,000 and 120,000 members nationwide, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has a hot political hand. To most Americans the DSA remains a mystery, but its impact is being felt in elections throughout the country. Conservatives are keeping one eye open but are largely dismissive. Establishment liberals are furious with the group. This episode puts the DSA in historical context and offers insight into how past challenges and current opposition present future opportunities for the social movement of record in the United States.
Chapters
Intro: 00:00:44
Max Notes: 00:01:27
Outro: 00:28:47
<...It’s Just Trump Against the World.
An original episode on how Trump will ultimately represent the final chapter of the American experiment. Empires don’t collapse. They crumble. But they’re reduced to a handful of chapters in history texts that depict them in stages with defined beginnings and ends. Donald Trump has already managed to set the stage for World War Three though it looks far different than prior great wars. He is the culmination of the hubris of empire. Here on my thoughts on how this goes down and what comes after.
Resources
Washington Post: How Four U.S. Presi...
Omnibus (09-27-26).
Max and 99 are back for another round of Omnibus. They hit headlines on Carney’s airport privatization sellout and the Ebola outbreak in the DRC that’s on pace to be the worst the world has ever seen. Then they tackle listener emails on AI recursive self-improvement hype and the TESCREAL cult behind it, Greenland’s surrender of sovereignty to Trump, and why “regulation” is just a sanitized word for protection. Enjoy!
Chapters
Intro: 00:00:31
Headlines: 00:13:20
Emails: 00:28:40
Memberships: 01:03:21
Outro: 01:04:45
Resources
Subscribe to Current Affairs Magazine.<...
The CLARITY Act is Dead (For Now).
The CLARITY Act (Digital Asset Market Clarity Act) failed to pass cloture and won’t be taken up on the Senate floor. This is very, very good news. Despite attempts until the last minute by New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand—a Democrat who is closely associated with the crypto lobby—not a single one of her colleagues came over to her side. So even she voted “no” to advance the bill. This likely means CLARITY is dead for the foreseeable future. But it doesn’t mean it’s gone. This is a victory for the banking industry and a huge blow to t...
On The Record (09-22-26).
This week we put a proper endcap on the summer’s debt discussions—the $40 trillion number is real, but the conversation around it is almost entirely dishonest, designed to make cuts to grandma’s Medicare seem inevitable while military spending and corporate tax rates never even make the list. Then we looked at the housing market, where sellers are quietly stuffing concessions into nearly half of all deals to keep headline prices from falling, which is either a buyer’s market emerging or the last gasp before demand destruction, depending on which generation you’re in.
Chapters
Intr...
InDeFLATION: F*cked Sideways Either Way.
The Producer Price Index (PPI) dropped and it was worse than expected. PPI is the measure of inflation building in the system and economists use it to forecast what consumer inflation will look like three to four months down the road. If these figures are any indication, inflation is about to hit the global economy like a tsunami and no amount of hand wringing and interest rate tweaking at the Federal Reserve is going to slow this train. In this episode, Max explains how this was all predictable based on Trump’s economic plan and the design of Project 2025. He...
Omnibus (09-12-26).
Max and 99 are back for another episode of Omnibus. They cover headlines on Israel killing a family of 12 in Lebanon including six children, and a new Elon Musk documentary alongside a fall movie season tackling Big Tech and its leaders. Then they tackle listener emails on childcare costs and the dependent care tax cap, Pete Buttigieg criticism, expanding Medicare versus a VA-style system, and whether Trump’s BLS numbers are even worth analyzing.
Chapters
Intro: 00:00:37
Headlines: 00:17:09
Emails: 00:35:13
Memberships: 01:23:44
Outro: 01:24:03
Resources
The Decemberists: Everything Is...
Scott Bessent Can’t Stop Failing: The Most Arrogant Man in the Land.
Scott Bessent can’t do anything right. He just announced a paltry bond buyback that fell flat with the market responding by pushing rates higher. Bessent also proclaimed that he is “the house” and that people shouldn’t bet against him because he has inside information about what the Bank of Japan is going to do. Interesting. The guy doesn’t know what our central bank is going to do but he has the inside track on the BOJ? The market there is also telling him to get lost. And after he said he would cripple the Iranian regime in a matte...
On The Record (09-08-26).
This week we dissected JD Vance’s child care rule change: A Heritage Foundation tradwife policy dressed up as family values, funded by gutting support for the single working parents who actually need it. Then Nathan Robinson joined us to talk about why the socialist moment is real and the DSA keeps winning where it’s not supposed to. And in honor of Labor Day, we put the wage-price spiral myth to rest: real wages flat for 50 years, corporate earnings through the roof, and the Fed looking the other way the whole time.
Chapters
Intro: 00:00:38
<...Labor Daze: Trump’s Resident Idiot Says the Economy is a Gift.
Trump administration official Kevin Hassett declared the latest jobs report as a “present to the American people” for Labor Day. Really, Kevin? Let’s dig into this claim by looking closely at the labor data. What you’ll find is that more Americans than ever are dislocated from the full-time employment picture in this country, and that this administration has zero idea how to fix it. And they’re not even trying. But, sure. Happy Labor Day, America. Enjoy the weekend worrying about how to pay your bills.
Resources
Bloomberg Television: NEC’s Hassett Says Inflation Is...
Omnibus (09-05-26).
Max and 99 are back for another round of Omnibus. They hit headlines on the White House’s Venezuelan oil deal and the money launderer at its center, the Pentagon rolling out its own versions of ChatGPT and Grok, and a Gloria Steinem mantra. Then they tackle listener emails on what drives career politicians to serve billionaires, taxpayer exposure on the Venezuela oil deal, and Reagan’s popularity as a byproduct of mass media monoculture. Enjoy, Unf*ckers.
Chapters
Intro: 00:00:22
Headlines: 00:04:38
Emails: 00:18:54
Fake Outro: 00:38:12
Memberships: 00:43:14
Outro: 00:44:01
<...Merchants of Death: The Men Who Killed Healthcare in America.
The United States doesn’t have a comprehensive healthcare “system.” It has a patchwork of coverage options that come with heavy price tags and complicated processes. Consistent GOP attacks have made the entire framework untenable, and the results speak for themselves. Healthcare coverage is deteriorating rapidly under Trump and there’s no going back at this point. This might be the opening we need to finally have a real conversation about Medicare for All. But there’s going to be a lot of pain between now and then.
Resources
KFF: ACA Marketplace Enrollment Is Down By 3 Milli...
Did Ronald Reagan Destroy the American Dream?
Ronald Reagan. Champion of neoliberalism. To some, the man who lifted the spirits of a nation and restored a sense of pride and optimism after a period of despair. To others, the Reagan years marked the death of liberalism. A dark turn toward unfettered capitalist exploitation and the decapitation of working class movements and civil rights. So, which is it? Was Ronald Reagan responsible for ushering in an era of prosperity and restoring national pride as his boosters maintain? Or was he indeed the harbinger of doom and the reason we have Donald Trump today? Like most things, it’s...
On The Record (09-01-26).
This week we tore apart The Heritage Foundation’s spin on the Venezuela oil deal—the “world’s gas station” line slogan, the math on what Venezuela gets back is embarrassing, and what’s really happening is a century-old colonial playbook dressed up in PR language. Then we looked at a Pew chart: global favorability of the U.S. just dropped below China’s for the first time. That’s where dollar dominance eventually ends—not in the bond market, but in reputation. And we’re burning through ours fast.
Chapters
Intro: 00:00:38
Quick Takes: 00:01:43
...Omnibus (08-29-26).
Max and 99 are back for another round of Omnibus. They hit headlines on John Roberts’ 40-year project to kill the Voting Rights Act and Spirit Airlines selling decades of flight attendant data to Google to train AI. Then they tackle listener emails on wage labor as a central issue, whether UNFTR is a GRU op (lol), and tech bros engineering technocratic feudalism. Enjoy!
Chapters
Intro: 00:00:40
Headlines: 00:07:38
Emails: 00:31:04
Memberships: 00:59:34
Outro: 01:00:33
Resources
Frazier Chorus: Dream Kitchen
Wired: Spirit Airlines Wants to Sell Its Da...
On The Record (08-25-26).
This week we staged an intervention for Scott Bessent—the failed hedge fund manager who lost 90% of his assets during the greatest bull run in history and is now the most interventionist Treasury Secretary in decades, scoring own goals in the bond market, undermining the new Fed chair, and threatening Iran with sanctions while refusing to answer a single question about China. Then we checked in on the Trump family stablecoin, which has quietly doubled in market cap. It’s a reminder that the most corrupt president in American history is building the most powerful personal wealth machine in the...
Don’t Tax the Rich. Cut Them Off.
Billionaires are easy to hate. And there are several efforts underway to get them to pay their “fair share.” In this episode, Max argues that focusing on taxing billionaires is the wrong discussion and distracts from attaining the tax policy we truly need. Instead of focusing on the individual billionaires, focus on preventing individuals from becoming billionaires. The real story is corporate taxes.
Resources
Legal Information Institute: Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA)
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: The 2017 Trump Tax Law Was Skewed to the Rich, Expensive, and Failed to Deli...
Omnibus (08-22-26).
Max and 99 are back for another Omnibus. They hit headlines on Tether, the $200 billion crypto company nobody can see inside, and a food safety traceability rule that’s stalled for 15 years. Then they tackle listener emails on Flock cameras doing far more than license plate reading, whether the broligarchy can dump the economic damage on the next Democratic president, and what happens to the dollar if it loses reserve currency status. Enjoy!
Chapters
Intro: 00:00:19
Headlines: 00:16:07
Emails: 00:36:11
Beyond the Bullshit: 01:10:54
Memberships: 01:13:51
Outro: 01:14:13
Resources
...
On The Record (08-18-26).
This week we named what’s actually happening to the American economy—Corporate Colonialism, the full realization of the Powell Memo’s 50-year project to hand the keys of democracy to the boardroom—and made the case that the real fight isn’t Trump, it’s the day after Trump. Then we got into the AI financing structures that are starting to look uncomfortably familiar: shell companies, off-balance-sheet guarantees, and phantom liabilities that only become real when everything goes wrong at once. If you get 2007 vibes, you’re paying attention.
Chapters
Intro: 00:00:38
Housekeeping: 00:01:28
Quick Ta...
Omnibus (08-11-26).
Max and 99 are back in action, (though IRL, Max is still on vacay!). They hit headlines on MAHA’s fault lines, Flock cameras tracking cars, the world’s most prolific Wikipedia editor, and OpenAI flying influencers to a luxury nature retreat. Then they tackle listener emails on the difference between socialism/communism/and fascism, and an Elon musk sycophant. Enjoy!
Chapters
Intro: 00:00:33
Headlines: 00:18:18
Emails: 01:07:48
Feature: 01:26:43
Memberships: 01:35:32
Outro: 01:36:30
Resources
Mark Curry: Sorry About The Weather
The Independent: Women’s historic pro ba...
The Great Unwind.
The AI trade might have found its canary in the coal mine. Leopold Aschenbrenner—a 25-year-old former OpenAI researcher built Situational Awareness into one of the hottest funds on Wall Street by betting long on the construction and infrastructure side of AI (Micron, CoreWeave) and short on the chips and software everyone else was chasing (Nvidia, Broadcom, Oracle). Then July happened, prime brokers made margin calls, and his entire public stock book got liquidated overnight in a single block trade.
This episode uses that blowup as the lens for a much bigger story: how a three-quarters-of-a-trillion-dollar hyperscaler sp...
Slow Moving Disasters: Climate Change, Artificial Intelligence and The Democratic Party.
This is one of those, get it off the chest episodes. A straightforward conversation about three slow moving disasters that threaten our way of life. Climate change, artificial intelligence and the Democratic Party. Obviously, that last one requires a bit of an explanation. This is that explanation.
Resources
United States Courts: Bankruptcies Rise 12.2 Percent
Book Love
Abdul El-Sayed + Micah Johnson: Medicare for All: A Citizen's Guide
UNFTR Resources
Video: Climate Change, AI and The DNC | Man-Made Disasters.
Essay: Slow Moving Disasters.
Episode: Climate...
On The Record (08-04-26).
This week we went deep on debt—all $72 trillion of it—and made the case that the bond market is the real economy, that the Fed has already lost control of the entire curve, and that when the AI trade unwinds, the flood into Treasuries won’t save anyone the way the textbook says it should. Then we watched Japan demonstrate in real time what happens when you don’t have the exorbitant privilege of issuing the world’s reserve currency. A 40-year low for the yen, Japan spending $87 billion in two days trying to hold it together, and the U.S. q...
Omnibus (08-03-26).
Max and 99 are back again! They dive into headlines on school choice draining public education, a for-profit hospital disaster, young adults moving back home in record numbers, and nonprofits positioning themselves for the IPO windfall. Then they tackle listener emails on teaching the New Deal, the royal “we” of collective blame, and how not to hate Republicans. Enjoy!
Chapters
Intro: 00:00:31
Headlines: 00:05:14
Emails: 00:46:02
Beyond the Bullshit: 01:13:07
Memberships: 01:15:02
Outro: 01:15:14
Resources
Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians: Balloon Man
The Progressive: ‘School Choice’ Does Not Prov...
On The Record (07-28-26).
This week we dug into the Maduro kidnapping as the entry point for something much bigger—the Cold War racism and corporate vengeance that has driven U.S. Policy toward Venezuela for decades, why there has never actually been a socialist government anywhere on earth, and why the American left needs to get its definitions straight before the right keeps winning that argument by default. Then we checked back in on AI concentration risk, where the hyperscalers are now issuing long-dated debt at spreads approaching junk bond territory, which tells you what the market actually thinks about pinning the en...
Trump and the Black Jelly Bean Theory: CLOs Echo the MBS Fiasco from the GFC.
The New York Fed released a troubling report detailing the risk of Collateralized Loan Obligation (CLO) exposure in the insurance industry. Over the past several years, private equity has taken larger and larger stakes in insurers who are historically risk averse. But now they’re acting more like hedge funds in their investment strategies and have more than $2 trillion in corporate debt exposure and nearly $300 billion of it is in mezzanine financing packaged much in the way mortgage backed securities (MBS) were in the run up to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Against the backdrop of persistent inflation, a re...
Omnibus (07-23-26).
Max and 99 are back for another round of Omnibus. They hit headlines on the Trump administration restricting visas for foreign journalists, tribes suing to block the gutting of the Endangered Species Act, SpaceX’s massive share unlock, and a defense of reading books in an era of mass literary abandonment. Then they tackle listener emails on coordinating progressive media against AIPAC, whether MMT is 1920s Germany, and some episode clarifications.
Chapters
Intro: 00:00:18
Headlines: 00:15:14
Emails: 00:44:38
Beyond the Bullshit: 00:59:42
Memberships: 01:16:15
Outro: 01:17:08
Resources
The Ne...
Shitty: The Quest to Make Everything Terrible.
Everything is getting worse, but the country hasn’t collapsed. This is all by design. Donald Trump is a useful idiot for the people behind the scenes and Project 2025, most notably Russell Vought. The Trump administration is using the nation’s finances like a personal piggy bank for themselves and large corporations while gutting agencies that provide critical services. The misconception is that Trump is driving things into the ground. He’s not. He’s just making things so shitty that the corporate state looks good in comparison.
Resources
ProPublica: “Their Entire Apparatus Is Exposed to Our Str...
On The Record (07-21-26).
This week we went to see The Odyssey and came out thinking about Bronze Age collapse, because Nolan’s Odysseus is haunted by the wreckage of a civilization that mistook conquest for strength—and the parallels basically write themselves. Then we checked in on the Leading Economic Index, which has been declining for years while the coincident index keeps climbing, and the gap between those two lines is the gap between Wall Street and everyone else: the market’s fine, the C-suite’s fine, but the person trying to build or buy a house is living in a completely differen...
On The Record (07-14-26).
This week we read the federal budget the way it’s meant to be read: as a moral document. What it shows is individuals paying more, corporations getting refunds, classrooms getting gutted, and the pentagon getting fed, all while the deficit stays exactly where it always was. The “fiscally responsible” costume is just that. Then we looked at the strategic petroleum reserve, which is sitting at 1983 levels after nearly 100 million barrels drawn down since the Iran war began—and with China about to reenter the market and the strait still choked off, the traders who’ve been keeping oil prices con...
