Mugwumping → What About Bobs → Code Rot

Hey Neighbor. As investors get a haircut, beauty mags are heralding the return of the Preppy Bob, a practical, above-the-shoulder tossle. Timing seems right. In 2008, Japanese economists found that women tend to cut their hair short (though not very short) at the outset of a market downturn. 

There’s a reason Margot Tenenbaum looks like that. Little thing called “Depression chic.”

If you’d rather not receive this newsletter, click here.

SHOPPING SHOULD WORK FOR YOU. NOW IT DOES.

Your shopping is all over the place—scattered emails, forgotten orders, expired rewards. Flash fixes it.

A single inbox for all orders. AI that tracks spending. No clutter. No guessing. Smarter shopping.

Join now and get free bonus points on every order. 

→ Tech layoffs continue to look like an extinction-level event for Upper Middle coders and no one outside the industry seems to care. One reason may be that coders’ compensation was disproportionate to sacrifice. As programmer and blogger Jeff Klein put it in 2019: “If you look at law, you have to win the prestige lottery and get into a top school… And then you have to continue… sacrificing any semblance of a personal life. Consulting, investment banking, etc., are similar… Medicine seems to be a bit better… but the combination of medical school and residency is still incredibly brutal compared to most jobs at places like Facebook and Google.” (READ MORE)

→ Workplace power move: Write sub-10 word email in a subject line then “-EOM.” Get carried out of the office on your coworkers’ shoulders. (READ MORE)

→ Trump’s attacks on Ivy League elites are not going to have their desired effect. Harvard has announced a hiring freeze in anticipation of federal funding cuts. Keeping Harvard small keeps actually increases the status conferred by a crimson diploma. If anti-book learnin’ populists really wanted to scuff up the Harvard brand, they’d give the school more money and demand it increase class sizes in order to better serve the public interest.^[1]

Upper Middle Research identifies readers with professional expertise and matches them with surveys and focus groups that pay up to $300 an hour (probably during lunch) and keep them abreast of what’s going on in their field.

Imagine a game of pick-up basketball. Bunch of folks show up in shorts and ratty grey tees. Teams are haphazardly chosen and then, just before the game starts, a guy shows up in a striped uniform and says he wants to ref. Everyone looks at the guy and has the same thought: What an asshole.

Last week, Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes, a Harvard man and Rhodes Scholar with very good hair, joined nine other Dems voting to censure Representative Al Green for an outburst during Trump’s State of the Union. Asked why he’d admonish a party member at a hyper-partisan moment, Himes offered the sort of purse-lipped moralism voters historically reward with unemployment.

“I revere this institution,” he said, “which I understand is a very unpopular position today.”  

A Mugwump response if ever there was one.

In 1884, a group of blue-blood, East Coast Republicans (and Mark Twain) broke with the GOP to protest the “Spoils System,” where civil service jobs went to party hacks after elections, causing turnover, chaos, and waste. These “party bolters,” called “Mugwumps”—an anglicization of an Algonquian word for wartime chief^[2]—wanted to replace “spoilsmen” with professionals who’d prioritize good government (and share the values of blue-blood, East Coast Republicans).

Naturally, the Mugwumps were reviled. Americans hate nothing more than a self-conscious elite patronizingly promoting the institutions they control as cures for social ills. Put differently, Americans hate the kind of self-important jerkoffs that show up wanting to ref. 

Witness the reaction to Aaron Sorkin’s call for Dems to nominate Mitt Romney. Witness Jim Himes – an ex-Goldman Sachs bankers, just to put a fucking bow on it – getting called a “gutless coward” on Bluesky for doing something he knew would by unpopular.

But the funny thing about Mugwumps isn’t how punchable their faces are, but that they win. Until Musk introduced a sort of “Skinny Spoils System” via DOGE – one focused on government contracts rather than jobs – the federal workforce had been stocked with masters degree-wielding public policy grads from the University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Georgetown, and Swarthmore, the exact sort of German-style academics the Mugwumps wanted to recruit.

Their success seems counterintuitive. But the Mugwumps weren’t leading a political movement—they were leading a cultural and class movement. They wanted to expand the elite’s institutional role, a project in which most members of the modern Upper Middle (and definitely Jim Hime) have been active participants.

The Mugwumps understood that players win or lose in the short-term but refs shape the outcomes forever – even when Spike Lee is haranguing him from the front row. Refs ultimately wins because fans don’t go to Madison Square Garden to watch grown men bicker about contact in the paint^[3]. 

“Now all is to be changed,” wrote the political philosopher Edmund Burke in 1790 reacting to the unrefereed bloodsport underway in France. “All the pleasing illusions… which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved.”

Florid, but resonant. A call for civility, the most pleasing illusion. You know, Jim Hime shit.

Let’s run it back. Imagine a game of pick-up basketball. Bunch of folks show up in shorts and ratty grey tees. Teams are haphazardly chosen and then, just before the game starts, one of the team captains says he thinks he should get to call all the fouls. The other team captain laughs skeptically and turns to the bench. 

“Anyone want to ref?” 

→ “Wafer-Thin Cardigans” are, according to Style editors at the Times, one of this spring’s big trends. As the pictures show, this look is trad on first blush, but comes very, very close to freeing the preppy nipple. And that’s the point – so to speak. (READ MORE)

→ AI is now the subject of dinner party conversation, which is fun because almost no one has any fucking idea what they’re talking about. Don’t let this stop you! (READ MORE) 

→ In Paris, reigning cocktail party power brand Loewe hosted a “Scrapbook” in lieu of a runway show. This intentionally messy collection rollout constitutes more evidence that the Silicon Valley ethos of “working in public” – turning labor into content into influence – is now everywhere. Bad new for people who don’t want fashion shows to share DNA with LinkedIn updates. (READ MORE)

→ Critiques are describing Thunderbolts as an A24 version of an Avengers movie. A few years ago, A24 eating Marvel would have sounded like a single moth eating an entire wafer-thin cardigan, but perhaps it was inevitable: Survey data suggests that the people most likely to go to movies are also the people most likely to read books. That would be us ~gestures broadly toward the Upper Middle~. Ultimately, culture gets made for people who consume culture.

https://mail.uppermiddle.news/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER

You are 10 referrals from getting some swag.

“Ask Mr. Market” is UPPER MIDDLE’s occasional financial advice column authored by Andrew Feinberg, a retired hedge fund manager who has beaten the S&P 500 for the last 30 years. He is the author/co-author of four books on personal finance.

Dear Mr. Market,

Wall Street strategists were euphoric about market prospects this year, but recent declines and crazy volatility are making me nervous. Wasn’t Trump supposed to be good for the markets?

Loaded Diaper in Little Rock

*

Dear Loaded,

I addressed this issue in Salon last year, but an update is needed. And I should start by admitting my bias: I think Trump is a dangerous, authoritarian madman andI’ve had 42% of my assets in cash since Inauguration.

But way more important is how the market is processing Trump policies.

First, it’s alarmed by Trump’s tariffs. It should be. Tariffs suck. Some of the bulls now say they thought Trump was bluffing. They may ultimately be proven right, but not yet. Consumers looking at tariff-inflated prices willo buy less. Bad for growth.

Second, it’s been broadsided by Trump taking a machete to the Federal workforce. Fired workers spend less money. That’s bearish. So are cuts in Federal spending (not on foreign aid).

Third, it’s confused by all the executive orders. Traders know we’re not in Kansas anymore and fear we’re closer to Vladivostok. Claiming that Ukraine started the war with Russia is not bullish for the simple reason that it’s insane. Chaos and inconsistency are not bullish.

Fourth, it’s in a different spot. Trump faces a bigger challenge than in his first term. When Trump took the oath the first time in 2017, the market was much less expensive so tax cuts could goose earnings. That’s not true now and any additional cuts will balloon the deficit. There’s a chance that even good policies might not elevate the market at this point – not that any have been proposed.

What if Trump changes his mind about everything? That would be good news, but it’s unlikely given that he doesn’t have to face voters again. If Trump becomes very unpopular, which seems to be happening, Republican legislators could revolt—or Trump can try to cancel the 2026 elections, which would be both bearish and grizzly.. 

Before you follow me into cash, consider two things:

1. I could be wrong. 

2. I have no need to grow my wealth. I have enough to buy a nice beachfront place in Gaza and a starter home on Mars. Most people, however, need the growth that only stocks can provide.^[4]

The sad truth is that you may not get it until Trump stops Trumping. And that’s not how the guy Trumps.

Sincerely,

Mr. Market

→ Markets are down. You can (and will) read about that elsewhere. But, perhaps more depressingly, the USD is down 7% against the Euro from January lows. Literally the only thing less expensive than when we were kids is travel. It’s our great indulgence. If that trends continue expect Tesla-style riots outside Le Pain Quotidien.

→ Only 4.3% of Americans think they own crypto (other may have exposure through institutions) and the median crypto-exposed American only has about $2,700 in that market. This is way there aren’t more people rending their garments (wafer-thin cardigans!) in the streets right now. (READ MORE)

→ Weather modeling experts unceremoniously fired by NOAA, where they diligently worked to protect their fellow Americans, have been doomed by DOGE cuts to making high-six and low-seven figures front-running commodity trades. Welcome to the Upper Middle meteorologists! You’re the new coders. (READ MORE)

[2] Mugwump was one of two preferred terms for pro-institutional elites. The other was “hermaphrodite.” The thinking there was that these people wanted to be two things at once (members of both parties). Using “hermaphrodite” as an insult is obviously… not great, but it’s also instructive. Commentators struggle with the idea that there can just be a third thing – like, not a combination, just a different thing.

[3] I know, I know. People went to see Reggie Miller bicker with John Starks. I also liked Winning Time. Calm down.

[4] I can’t afford a sweet pad in Gaza but went heavy on money markets last week. I’d be pretty pleased with myself if I didn’t also own crypto. Real sucker shit.